World's Smallest Violin
by kazooband
Summary: "Mum, I'm an Auror.  I helped arrest his father."  "Draco is not a Death Eater."  ...she could see that her mother knew that she wanted to say "Not yet."    "Nymphadora, either I was going to take him in, or Bellatrix would."
1. Remember

**Chapter 1: Remember**

Forty years a wizard, and Ted Tonks still insisted that his front door be locked with a deadbolt and key, which frequently left his flummoxed daughter on the point of entering her parents' house but fumbling through her pockets and wondering when she would crack and just open the door with magic. That night was no different. It was one of many things that Tonks loved and admired about her father, but it had to stop now, tonight.

It should have stopped two weeks ago, when her parents came to visit her in St. Mungo's to satisfy themselves that she would survive the curse she had taken while fighting in the Department of Mysteries. Of course, they did not know where the fight had taken place, thought that her injuries were earned in the line of duty as an Auror, only knew as much as the _Daily Prophet_ had said, would not have known the Order of the Phoenix from the Central Cardiff Ninepins Bowling League. At the time, Tonks did not have the lungs to explain.

Really, though, the lock should have been replaced a year ago, the very night of the third task of the Triwizard Tournament, but she had not insisted, even as the signs slowly crept up around her, even as Kinsley Shacklebolt quietly recruited her into the Order of the Phoenix, even as she learned the real stakes. At the time, one last bastion of normalcy had not seemed like too much to ask. Now Tonks wondered how she would lave learned to live with herself if Death Eaters had targeted her unprotected family.

Finally, on her third search through her pockets, Tonks located the key, which she stuffed immediately into the lock. She stepped inside and was immediately greeted by an enticing aroma from the kitchen, which she took a moment to appreciate as she made sure that the door was closed tight. Tonks decided that a cooking competition between Andromeda Tonks and Molly Weasley was something she would dearly like to see.

"Mum? Dad?" Tonks called. "I hope you made enough dinner to share, because-"

Words failed when she reached the sitting room and beheld the strange scene waiting there. To her left, Tonk's mother was frozen stiff but, clearly, she had recently been in very rapid motion, no doubt hoping to intersect Tonks while she was still in the hall by the door. To the right, her father was attempting to repress a sputtering cough and clean the tea from the front of his robes, the probable result of attempting to take a sip and surge out of his favorite armchair simultaneously. Tonks had seen this once before. This time it was not nearly as funny.

Draco Malfoy was seated directly across from her, leaning on one arm of the sofa. Tonks immediately thought of several things she would have dearly liked to say about that, then she recognized the book he was holding, _The Catcher in the Rye_, from her own shelf, and thought of a few more.

Tonks twitched. Her wand was in a holster at her hip, but she stayed the impulse and surveyed the room with an Auror's eye. Her father had regained control of his breathing as was saying something in soothing tones, which Tonks allowed to pass by without trying to listen or comprehend. Her mother took a step forward, but Tonks held up a hand in warning.

Tonks only had eyes for Malfoy. His hands were partly hidden by the book, and he could have easily concealed his wand behind it as well. Her parents could be Imperiused, but how could a single sixteen year old wizard overpower two adults? General security notwithstanding, her parents were no amateurs when it came to self defense. Malfoy must have had help. Considering this, Tonks took a slow step to the side, placing her back against the wall instead of the open hallway and finally took out her wand.

Tonks knew fourteen ways of containing a situation where she suspected that the Imperius Curse was in play. Twelve required at least two Aurors, one required all of the suspects to be in the same room, a fact she had not established. The last option was also the most risky.

Coming to her decision, Tonks twitch her wand, nonverbally summoning all the wands in the house. Her parents' wands flew obediently to her. Tonks caught the first left handed but narrowly missed the second and ended up bobbling and eventually dropping them both, and nearly her own wand as well. Distracted, Tonks glanced at the mess at her feet and sighed, relieved that at least both wands appeared to be intact. That was when something large materialized from the direction of the hallway and struck her smartly on the side of the head. It clattered to the ground and Tonks went down with it, dropping to her knees.

Struggling to keep her balance, Tonks forced her eyes open. When the stars cleared away, she found her parents kneeling nearby, peering at her with concern. Malfoy had not moved much, but there was an amused glint in his eye that Tonks did not like.

The object that struck her had landed nearby: it was the bulky metal box where her parents had stored her wand when she was home from Hogwarts. No doubt it now contained Malfoy's wand. Fortunately, it had struck her side on, otherwise she certainly would have been knocked out. As it was, her ear and cheek were stinging sharply, and it was difficult to keep her eyes from watering.

"Nymphadora, you remember your cousin Draco," Andromeda said as she sorted out the fallen wands and took up the metal box.

"I probably should have flooed ahead and made sure it was alright to come over," Tonks muttered. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. "Can I talk to you in private, please?"

"Sure," her father said, helping her to her feet and leading her toward the kitchen.

"You know that book was written by a Muggle," Tonks informed Malfoy as they passed by him, the easiest outlet for her frustration with the current situation.

When they reached the kitchen, Tonks immediately wished they had picked a different room for their conversation. Her head swam and pounded with her every movement and the concentrated smells of dinner, previously so enticing, now made her feel rather sick. The only concession she made to this was to lean against the counter.

"No funny business, now," Andromeda said as she approached and shined her lit wand into Tonks' eyes to check for signs of a concussion, knowing before Tonks did that she would try and use her Metamorphmagus abilities to conceal any injury. "What were you thinking, anyway?"

"That he could have had you Imperiused," Tonks responded.

"A sixteen year old boy?" Ted exclaimed. "I'm ashamed you think so little of us."

"Really, Nymphadora," her mother agreed, "has you're time as an Auror made you so paranoid?"

Better paranoid than dead, Tonks thought, though it was not doing her any favors at the moment.

"What's he doing here?" Tonks asked at last.

"His father's been arrested," Andromeda replied.

"I know that," Tonks muttered, trying not to roll her eyes.

"Well, Narcissa has a lot of matters she needs to take care of," Andromeda continued, "so she asked me to take him in for awhile."

"Wait, you're in contact with Narcissa?" Tonks demanded, feeling as though she'd been punched in the stomach.

"That's Aunt Narcissa to you," Andromeda corrected irritably.

"Answer the question," Tonks said, trying to remember the last time she had been admonished about calling Narcissa Malfoy by her familial title.

"Not for years," Andromeda replied, "up until last week when she wrote me about Draco."

Tonks sighed. It was not as bad as she thought, but not by much. There were already those among the Aurors who looked on her with suspicion because of her close blood relation to so many powerful Death Eaters. If this got out she would lose much of the trust she had worked so hard to gain.

"Mum, I'm an Auror. I helped arrest his father."

That was news, and it took her mother a moment to recover the line of her argument.

"Draco is not a Death Eater."

Tonks only just managed to bite back her response to that, but she could see that her mother knew that she wanted to say "Not yet." Her time as an Auror had changed her. She used to trust people to do the right thing, giving them the benefit of the doubt, now she required them to earn it.

"I can't turn him out," Andromeda said with an icy stare, which Tonks had occasionally seen in her childhood after the most extreme misbehavior. "He's my nephew."

"I'm your daughter."

"He's sixteen, you're twenty three," Andromeda maintained. "You can take care of yourself. You don't even live here anymore."

"No, but I like coming over sometimes," Tonks said in a small voice.

Andromeda's expression softened. "Nymphadora, either I was going to take him in, or Bellatrix would," she said.

Tonks flinched before she could stop herself, and then words were flooding out of her.

"Mum, Bellatrix is crazy. She's lost it. She's out of her gourd, at least three Knuts short of a Galleon. I saw her." _She saw me, recognized me._ "I fought her." _And all those years of Auror training came to nothing. Out dueled in seconds._ "She tried to kill me, and she was enjoying it." _I thought she had killed me._ "She's the one who killed Sirius."

Andromeda's expression was fixed and though her eyes stared in Tonks' direction it was obvious that she did not see anything. Tonks immediately felt sorry that she had been the one to bring her such harsh words about her sister.

"That must've been terrifying," Ted said, placing a hand on Tonks' shoulder. Ted Tonks was a man of few words, but when he did speak he always had the right ones.

"Yeah," Tonks replied in a feeble voice. Now that she had stopped worrying about her own career for long enough to consider the entire situation, she had to admit that this was quite possibly the best possible arrangement for Draco. "I shouldn't have given you a hard time about letting him stay here," she said at last.

Andromeda responded to this by coming back from her trace with a conciliatory shrug.

"Listen, the real reason I came was to talk to you about your defenses here," Tonks said. "You really ought to put up a few shields so that just anyone can't walk inside."

"Oh, we have all that well in hand," Ted replied placatingly.

"I'm serious, Dad, a Muggle lock and key won't cut it," Tonks said.

"We've got plenty of shields and charms up, and Ted and Albus worked out a clever little system with the keys," Andromeda explained.

"I didn't notice anything on the way in." Tonks had been expecting an argument on the subject and was having trouble catching on to the notion that the job was already done.

"Yes, well, you're allowed in here, aren't you," Andromeda pointed out.

"Wait, you and Dumbledore charmed the keys?" Tonks asked, turning to her father. That had taken long enough to clunk into place, maybe she did have a concussion after all. "Why did mine work?"

"Dumbledore himself must have gotten to it at some point," Andromeda said. "I daresay you see him from time to time in your Order of the Phoenix business."

"You know about that?" Tonks gasped. The hits just kept coming.

After being admonished several times by several people upon first joining the Order to keep her parents in the dark, she had eventually supposed that the instructions must have come from the top and come to the conclusion that, for a man willing to take Severus Snape at his word, Dumbledore could be a right mistrustful old dingbat when he put his mind to it. Now she just felt foolish.

"Dumbledore told us," Andromeda said.

Of course he did. "Sorry I didn't tell you myself," Tonks said.

"Quite alright," Ted replied. "But, young lady, next time you join a secret society of dark wizard fighters, we want to be the first to know."

"You've got it," Tonks replied, returning his smile.

"Will you join us for dinner?" Andromeda asked, checking on the oven and the stove. "It'll be ready soon."

"Better not," Tonks replied reluctantly, nodding in the direction of the sitting room, where they'd left Malfoy. If even half of Harry's account of the past year at Hogwarts was true, and Harry was not one to lie about such matters, then Tonks was certain that she did not have the stomach to share a table with a person who had played an unapologetic part in those crimes.

"Do you think you can help him?" Tonks asked.

"I know we're going to try," Andromeda replied.

It was all anyone could ask for.

"I'll see you guys later," Tonks said, and took her leave.

On the way out, she took a detour to her old bedroom and removed several books that she did not want Malfoy pawing through. However resigned she might be to her cousin's presence in her parent's house, Tonks was still irritated by the very sight of him, so on the way to the door she did not resist the urge to poke her head into the sitting room, where Malfoy was still on the sofa, reading her copy of _The Catcher in the Rye_.

"Holden ends up in an insane asylum," Tonks called in to him, and then left. She did not need to look back to know that he had heard and understood, she could feel his glare on her back.

* * *

><p>Outside, Tonks immediately decided that she did not want to return to her perpetually dirty flat with its empty pantry and the flickering light that she never had the time to ask her landlord to fix. With no Auror or Order duties until the following morning, she chose instead to join the other Order members who had congregated on their night off, then nearly splinched herself by remembering at the last possible second that Grimmauld Place was no longer a secure location to meet.<p>

Tonks appeared instead in the alley beside the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade, fortunately with all body parts accounted for, and let herself in by the side entrance.

The pub was deserted except for the barkeep at his usual station, and Lupin, Moody, Mundungus, and Kingsley, hunched around one end of a long table against the far wall. Tonks ordered a firewhiskey and brought it and her stack of books over to the other end of the same table. Those already there did not invite her to join them: Order members were only too familiar with the strange mood that caused someone to desire proximity but shun company.

Tonks stared for a moment at her firewhiskey, contemplating the possible side effects of combining a minor head injury with hard liquor, then picked it up and drained it in one. The bartender caught her eye and held up the bottle, asking if she would like another, but Tonks shook her head.

All too soon, the conversation at the opposite end of the table broke up and the other Order members gathered their coats to leave. Tonks sighed. She did not want to leave, but she also did not want to be the only person there in addition to the barkeep. Abruptly, she wondered if it got awfully lonely tending bar in a rundown and frequently deserted old pub such as this. Her thoughts were interrupted when someone nearby cleared his throat.

"This seat taken?"

A joke. Of course it was not taken.

"Sit down, Lupin."

"I thought you said you were staying with your parents tonight," Lupin said, taking the seat across from her. He had a full bottle of butterbeer in front of him, which he rolled between his hands without drinking.

"Plans change," Tonks replied. She chose not to elaborate and Lupin did not ask her to, for which she was grateful. Tonks thought she might have learned a valuable lesson about keeping secrets from her conversation with her parents, but here she was, keeping another one.

"Doing some reading?" Lupin asked instead, scanning the spines of the books stacked next to her.

"Oh…yeah," Tonks replied, "I picked those up from my parents' house, I hadn't read them in awhile, you know how it is." She pushed the stack across the table, inviting him to take a closer look. Lupin was an old intellectual type, a stack of books should have kept him occupied for awhile, and would have, if Tonks had not made a critical oversight.

"The Amazing Spider Man?" Lupin exclaimed, reaching the small collection of comic books at the bottom of the pile and flipping through the one on top. "Nymphadora Tonks, I'm surprised at you."

"With great power comes great responsibility," Tonks reminded him, pulling the thin volume out of his hands.

"Of course," Lupin replied. "I've always preferred X-Men myself. I guess it soothed the mind of a young lycanthrope to think that one day I might be able to learn to control the wolf, use my powers for good, as it were."

"Here you go, then," Tonks said, pulling an X-Men comic from the stack and handing it over, surprised and pleased to find a kindred spirit in such an unexpected place.

They read in silence for a few minutes, but before long they fell back into conversation, discussing their favorite characters and issues, and eventually their talk turned back to the Battle in the Department of Mysteries, as all discussions seemed to do. It took even less time than Tonks would have expected. Perhaps the comic books, with their sanitized violence without lasting consequences and bright onomatopoeia had put them in mind of the real horrors they had seen. However, their most recent battle made an insufficient buffer between themselves and the topic they had been trying to avoid but been inching steadily toward in spite of themselves: Sirius. Lupin was the first to crack.

"How did your Mother take the news?" he asked at last. "She and Sirius were close as kids, you know."

"She doesn't really let on about that sort of thing," Tonks replied. In truth she had gone into one of her trances when Tonks told her during their visit at St. Mungo's. That was sign enough to those who knew her. Tonks had meant to follow up on very question on her most recent visit home, but other issues had distracted her. The Black family had always been a sensitive issue in the Tonks household and Sirius, long thought to be the ultimate betrayer of childhood solidarity, had been persona non grata.

"How about you?" Tonks asked.

"Oh," Lupin hesitated. Could he really not have been expecting that question? The light in the Hog's Head was dim, but enough to see the drawn and haunted look that crossed his face. "You know how it is," he answered at last.

Tonks considered this for a moment and decided that she did not. She had only just been getting to know Sirius, but she had observed him and Lupin over the past year. Closer than brothers, they were. The magnitude of loss that Lupin had experienced in his life was nearly inconceivable. The shear weight of it all would surely have crumbled a lesser man, yet here he was, washing it all down with a bottle of butterbeer, preparing to risk it all again tomorrow, and never a complaint.

Words were insufficient here. Tonks took Lupin's hand across the table. He squeezed back, hard.


	2. Prisoner's Dilemma

**Chapter 2: Prisoner's Dilemma**

Draco shut the book and set it aside. Nymphadora was right; Holden had narrated the entire thing from an insane asylum. It was more interesting, though, that she seemed to think him stupid enough to make it half way through a novel without deducing that its author was a Muggle. Anyway, her selection of books with magical authors was amazingly small; he had read nearly all of them before ever setting foot in the Tonks residence and polished off the rest of them in a few days.

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand of the guest room. 3:47 a.m., no wonder his eyes felt so tired, but Draco felt no desire to go to sleep, or do anything else, for that matter.

Draco turned out the light, reclined in the bed, and stared at the ceiling, contemplating his current level of boredom. At home he would be able to see his friends, ride his broom, boss around the house elves, use magic more or less as he pleased, and, if all that was not enough, he would almost certainly have met his legendary Aunt Bellatrix by now. Who knows, he might have even been given a real part to play in the war.

In the darkness, Draco rolled up his left sleeve and inspected the bare skin of his forearm by the pale green light of the electric clock. One day the Dark Mark would sit there, and one day it would burn, black and hot. And then Draco Malfoy, first among Death Eaters, would rise up and do his master's bidding.

But instead he was stuck in a tiny house that ran on electricity (electricity! And why?), with his wand locked in a box in the closet, and no notion of whether he was a prisoner, a guest, or a resident. That was by far the worst part, not knowing his own rights and privileges, not even sure if he could enter a room where he had not been invited or rummage through the refrigerator when the mood struck him. He had tried to test these boundaries on his second day there, with the vague hope that enough misconduct would get him sent home, and gotten no useful results whatsoever, only a stern talk from Aunt Andromeda wherein she informed him that such behavior was unnecessary.

Draco briefly considered starting in on some of his summer homework, but with the O.W.L.s still fresh in his mind he decided that he was not quite bored enough to do any actual learning yet. Instead, he stood and slipped next door to return _The Catcher in the Rye_ to Nymphadora's bookshelf and select something else to read. He bypassed Morrison and both Brontes, and chose something by Dumas, which he replaced ten pages later, having just discovered the origins of the Muggle phrase the three Musketeers. D'Artagnan reminded him far too much of Harry Potter. In the end he chose a book promisingly titled _The Color of Magic_ and returned to the guest room.

However, after fumbling for an irritating amount of time just to get the light turned back on and settling back on the bed, the only place in the room to sit, Draco decided that the idea of starting another book no longer interested him. After considering and rejecting the notion of simply going to sleep, he went to his school trunk for parchment, quill, ink, and a textbook to use as a writing surface and returned to the bed to think about to whom he should write. Between them, Crabbe and Goyle could nearly match the brainpower of a mountain troll, there was at best a fifty percent chance that Blaise Zabini would actually reply, and Draco could think of nothing to say to Theodore Nott, so he finally settled on writing to Pansy. He composed a few lines of general complaint about being separated from his friends for the summer, mentioned with fondness their time in the Inquisitorial Squad, added a veiled request for new information about the war, signed his name, and finally went to sleep.

* * *

><p>When Draco awoke, it was nearly lunchtime, and light was streaming in through the south facing window, baking his feet under the covers. Draco slipped out of bed, dressed, and emerged. Andromeda was in the sitting room, pointing her wand among the pictures and figures on the mantle, apparently dusting. She seemed to spend all of her time either cleaning or cooking and Draco could not understand why she did not get a house elf.<p>

"There you are," she said, looking up from her work. "You missed breakfast. Would you like me to wake you up if it looks like you're oversleeping?"

Draco did not respond, and he most certainly did not want his Aunt waking him up in the mornings.

"Maybe just if I've made something special for breakfast, then," Andromeda continued, undeterred. Draco's silent treatment was loosing its effect. "Anyway, I was thinking we'd have sandwiches for lunch, there's plenty of food in the refrigerator if you want to make yourself one."

"I'd like to post a letter," Draco said. His voice sounded raspy and disused.

Andromeda looked up, startled, and Draco realized that this was the first sentence he had ever uttered in her presence.

"Of course you can," Andromeda replied, recovering. "Quicksilver likes to sleep in the oak tree in the garden during the day, go ahead. Pick a few carrots while you're out there, will you?"

Draco was surprised but forced him not to show it as he made his way to the back door and stepped outside. He had been so certain that Andromeda would ask to inspect the letter before allowing him to send it that he had not bothered with a seal.

"Quicksilver, huh?" Draco muttered, spotting the barn owl on a branch above his head and using the rolled up letter to poke it awake. "Clever."

Quicksilver opened one eye to inspect him, then obediently glided down to a lower branch and allowed Draco to tie the letter to his leg.

As the owl flapped away, Draco turned his attention to the garden surrounding him. It was clear that Andromeda spent a lot of time and effort here. Neat rows of vegetables stretched off to his right and artfully arranged flowers grew to the left, surrounding a small pond with a fountain. Draco returned inside without gathering the requested carrots, that was servant work and he refused to do it. Anyway, he had no idea what a carrot looked like if it wasn't cut and cooked and on his plate.

Back inside, Draco bypassed the kitchen and sat down at his usual place at the table. Snacks were one thing, but Draco would not prepare his own meals. Instead, he pulled over the Daily Prophet that someone had left there that morning and flipped through it, counting the minutes until Andromeda made his lunch for him. Eleven minutes later she stopped her cleaning, went into the kitchen, looked around for the carrots, muttered, "It was a simple enough request," and strode out the back door. Nineteen minutes after Draco sat down at the table, Andromeda finally set a sandwich and a bowl of salad down in front of him. No house elf would have dared to make him wait that long, nor would he or she dare to make such a foolish mistake as to forget to bring him something to drink.

"Pumpkin juice?" Draco said pointedly.

"On the door of the refrigerator," Andromeda replied. "Cups are in the cupboard to the right of the sink." She took a long drink from her own glass.

So these were deliberate countermeasures. Draco did not try to guess what game Andromeda was playing, he only vowed to beat her at it. He set to his sandwich with nothing to drink and pushed his salad aside when he realized that she had also neglected to give him a fork. Andromeda watched all this without comment.

"What are you planning to do today?" Andromeda asked after a few minutes of silent chewing.

Draco shrugged, truthfully, his mouth dry.

"Well, it's a beautiful day," she continued. "I am going to work in the garden. You can join me if you like."

Draco did not bother with a response. They both knew his answer. He finished his sandwich and stood, leaving Andromeda to deal with his dishes.

"I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with your attitude here," Andromeda said, her words chasing him from the room.

Draco fetched the book he had chosen from the guest room and settled himself on the sofa in the sitting room, the same as he had done the previous day, and the day before that, and every day since he had been banished.

* * *

><p>Pansy's reply, when it arrived, was long and simpering and he only read as far as <em>My Dearest Draco<em> before tossing it aside, feeling slightly nauseated.

The clock read four a.m. and Draco felt ready to drop with exhaustion, but also irritatingly reluctant to either turn out the light or close his eyes, so instead he paced the room, cursing the name Frankenstein.

After nearly being scared out of his skin for the third time by the nocturnal noises of the animals outside, Draco gave it all up as a bad job and stepped outside the guest room with the vague notion of getting a glass of water, and perhaps a wizarding wireless for some background noise. He came up short when he found a light on and Ted already sitting at the kitchen table.

"Couldn't sleep either, eh?" Ted asked, looking up from a piece of parchment in front of him.

Draco hesitated. Tormenting Granger and the other Mudbloods at Hogwarts about their blood status was one thing, but doing the same to his host seemed to be lacking in propriety in a way that he could not quite define. So far, Draco had neatly dodged the issue by simply avoiding Ted whenever they were in the same room, but this was the first time Ted had asked him a direct question when Andromeda was not nearby to diffuse the situation.

"Me, I always seem to think a nice puzzle will send me straight off," Ted continued, watching Draco clatter around the kitchen. "Somehow I always forget that there's not much I like more than a good puzzle. Anyways, I might as well stay awake for the duration, at this point."

Draco took a long drink of water.

"You're really buying what Voldemort is selling."

Draco coughed and sputtered. Hearing the Mudblood utter the Dark Lord's name was nearly enough to make him forget his resolution not to talk to Ted. Containing his fury with an effort, Draco set the empty glass next to the sink.

"It doesn't have to be this way, you know," Ted called as Draco returned to the guest room, exhausted with both Ted and Andromeda and their attempts to understand him. The entire situation made him want to take a shower.


	3. Fight

**Chapter 3: Fight**

Three days later and Tonks still had only seen the inside of her flat for about five minutes in total. She was standing at the back of a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, the first since the fight they had begun calling the battle of the Department of Mysteries. Everyone was present, less those on duty, and it was shaping up to be a record breaker. Professor McGonagall had volunteered the sitting room of her predictably austere house for the occasion, which was somewhat fortunate: it was a strange and awkward enough location for a recent Hogwarts student to find herself that she was prevented from drifting off where she stood.

Tonks crossed her arms and shifter her weight to her other foot. Dumbledore had agreeably yielded the floor to Mundungus Fletcher, who had a few ideas about what to do with Grimmauld Place now Sirius was gone that soon had the entire meeting derailed. In a few minutes Tonks would have to take over for Hestia Jones, who was patrolling Privet Drive, and she had been hoping that the might get into some discussion of strategy before then. Little chance of that now.

"I've got a Sickle that says Arthur will throw the first punch," Lupin muttered to Tonks, nudging her with his elbow.

Arthur was indeed looking very antsy in his seat near the front, probably only restrained by Molly, but there was another person in the room still closer to informing Mundungus exactly what he thought about the plan to ransack Sirius' house. A single glance was enough to tell her that.

"Smart money's on you, my friend," she whispered back.

"Me?" Lupin scoffed. "I could hardly strike someone in the middle of a peaceful argument."

"In defense of the memory of your friend?" Tonks pointed out. "I've seen you fight, you could."

"Hardly a fair bet, though," Lupin said.

"I'm in," Tonks replied.

"Fine," he agreed, shaking her outstretched hand.

"I'll be expecting that sickle and extensive details next time we see each other," Tonks concluded, the clock telling her it was time to be off.

"Say hello to Harry if you see him," Lupin replied. "Then tell him to go back inside where it's safe."

"If you do end up going back to Grimmauld Place, make sure someone grabs the hat on the arm of the chair near the fire," Tonks said. "It's my favorite one."

Tonks stepped outside to Disapparate. The key, she had discovered, to remaining untroubled by the residents of Privet Drive during her patrols was to make her appearance as eccentric as possible. Toward that end, she had brought along a stuffed toy cat to drag along on a leash, accompanying the tousle-haired, snaggle-toothed, and generally bedraggled appearance she had prepared for the occasion.

She sorted out her clothes, face, and props in the shadows of the path between Magnolia Crescent and Privet Drive, the designated meeting point for those on patrol duty. When she was finished a few minutes later, Hestia Jones still had not appeared.

Assuming that Hestia had simply lost track of the time again, Tonks walked to Privet Drive, calling softly, "Hestia! Hey, Jones, it's Tonks. Where are you, you silly- Expecto Patronum!"

A cluster of no less than thirty Dementors was gathered a short ways down the street and Tonks chased her Patronus toward it. Fatigue forgotten, she fought her way to the center of the Dementors where Hestia Jones was lying unconscious.

Thinking fast, Tonks sent a Patronus message to the Order, but doing so sapped her concentration and weakened the Patronus that was defending them. She was forced to recast, but the Dementors were already beginning to drain her will and strength. These Dementors were acting with purpose and intent that she had never seen before and Tonks knew she could not hold them off for long. There were too many of them for her to escape the circle on foot without a distraction and Disapparating would leave the Dementors without any thing to keep them occupied, it would be akin to setting them loose on Harry and his neighbors. Tonks realized all this, and then she realized that something was wrong.

Almost the entire Order was at the meeting she had just left. It should have taken no time at all to organize a rescue. They should have been here already.

The length of time it took Tonks to realize why help was not coming was a testament to the influence of the Dementors on her ability to think. Feeling as though she was looking through a thick fog, Tonks caught a glimpse of her Patronus as it raced past: no bear was that but some smaller four legged creature, gone out of sight before she could fully register what it was. No matter, though, unless the Order received a Patronus they recognized, they would assume it was a trick.

"Hestia, wake up!" Tonks shouted urgently, prodding the witch roughly with her foot, blinking images of her mad Aunt out of her vision. "I need you to send a message!" Magic had no effect either, Jones was too far gone. Tonks could feel that her face and hair had returned to their natural appearances and she was beginning to wonder if she could even Disapparate anymore.

A final desperate idea occurred to her, but she dismissed it roughly. Certainly Harry would come running to help, but she would die before she would ask him. Tonks knew she had to at least find a way to warn him, though. Her fight was fought, but with a little notice Harry could find a way to escape before they came for him.

Without hope, Tonks sent a final message to the Order and watched her new Patronus fade out of existence as a result. It was not just grey fog and rattling breath filling her senses now, but the sparks of flying spells of old, the shouts and screams of the chaos of battle, her Aunt's mad laughter. Tonks knew she was about the pass out. She had to send a warning to Harry, but still she delayed. Her knees ached from contact with the asphalt road. She could not remember falling but she clung to the pain of it because she knew it was real. Tonks tried to cast a final spell, but her arm was too heavy to lift.

Then it was gone. Tonks fell to her side, shoulder impacting the road painfully, and sucking in a grateful breath that felt like it must have been her first in a hundred years. Four Patronuses swept over her head, scattering the Dementors like bowling pins. Tonks found this very funny for some reason. Three people rushed past, sending the Dementors on their way, another dropped to his knees at her side.

Tonks was helped to a seated position and found Bill Weasley beside her. "How are you feeling?" he asked, turning to Hestia.

"Never better," Tonks replied dizzily, then fell into a fit of coughing, overcome by the memory of the Dementors and their horrible, rattling breath. "How is Hestia?"

Bill managed to bring Hestia around, but she lay so quiet and still that they were both afraid she might have suffered the kiss. Neither of them truly breathed again until Dumbledore returned with Shacklebolt and Lupin and determined that she was simply in a severe state of shock. Bill promptly offered to take Hestia to St. Mungo's and Disapparated with her in his arms.

Tonks, meanwhile, had struggled to her feet and was making her stiff and unsteady way in the direction of Harry's house. Lupin fell in step with her.

"You really ought to go to St. Mungo's too," he suggested.

"I'm fine," Tonks contradicted, soldiering on,

"You're shaking all over," Lupin protested. "I can see it from here. Don't worry about Harry, I'll check on him."

"I'm fine," Tonks repeated.

"In that case," Lupin said, pulling a sickle from his pocket and passing it over. "Take your blood money."

"You punched him?" Tonks exclaimed gleefully. "Wait…there was blood?"

"Man had it coming," Lupin replied, examining his hand. "Anyway, say what you like about that meeting, in the end it wasn't boring."

"Details!" Tonks demanded. "What did old Dung say that finally broke the refinement of one Remus Lupin?"

But Lupin was already past that. "Tonks, I'm sorry we didn't come sooner. It was your Patronus, no one recognized it."

"I know," Tonks said. "But since when can the form of a Patronus change?"

"I've heard of it happening sometimes, when someone has a big shock or a life changing event," Lupin replied. "Anything like that happen to you?"

"Do you mean since ten minutes ago?" Tonks joked. "I guess it looked a bit like Sirius, in his dog form, I mean." But even as she said it she knew she was wrong, the Patronus she had seen was bigger than a dog, stronger, fiercer. "I didn't get a very good look at it, though."

"I did," Lupin said. He hesitated, then plunged ahead. "It was a werewolf."

"Really," Tonks replied, sizing him up. He appeared tense but otherwise unreadable. "Well don't let it go to your head, wolf man. There's really no telling what's going on in this bean of mine. Besides, I know plenty of werewolves."

Again his reaction was unreadable. In spite of her words, Tonks searched her mind for a reason why her Patronus would change to resemble Lupin's wolf.

At last they turned a corner and came into view of number 4 Privet Drive. All was quiet. A few lights were on in the house and the noise of a television floated through an open window. Tonks heaved a sigh of relief and sank gratefully onto the nearby retaining wall of a garden across the street. Lupin sat down next to her.

"How long was it?" Tonks asked, "between the first and second Patronus?"

"A couple of minutes," Lupin replied. "Maybe three."

"Felt like hours," Tonks said.

Dumbledore caught up to them a few minutes later. Tonks started to get to her feet, but he waved her back and took a seat next to her on the opposite side from Lupin.

"Nymphadora, I must thank you for your excellent work," Dumbledore began. He was one of the few people permitted to call her by her given name. "Your quick thinking and selfless attitude may well have prevented a much larger disaster tonight."

"Any time, sir," Tonks replied with a shrug, trying to think of a single thing she had done which might be misinterpreted as quick thinking.

"Now then," Dumbledore continued, "you certainly could use a good night's rest. Kingsley has agreed to take over the remainder of your patrol and I myself must check the wards surrounding the Dursley residence. Remus, would you be so kind as to see Miss Tonks home safely?"

"Certainly," Lupin replied. He got to his feet and held out his hand. "Would you like a side-along?"

Tonks cast him a disparaging look, got to her feet, and Disapparated.

"I was just asking," Lupin muttered when he appeared a few seconds after Tonks in the hallway outside her flat. "Professor Dumbledore is having a good laugh back there."

"I try to cheer up at least one person every day," Tonks replied as she released the last layer of protection on her door and led the way inside. While she was restoring the charms, Lupin found his way into the kitchen and began rummaging through the cabinets. "Please make yourself at home," Tonks called pointedly.

"You don't have any chocolate?" Lupin replied. "Or food?"

"There might be some tea somewhere."

Tonks sat down wearily at the table under the flickering light while Lupin prepared the tea. She pulled a lock of hair in front of her eyes and found it a dull shade of brown, but she could not summon the energy or concentration to change it back to pink.

"Not very domestic, I take it," Lupin observed, taking a seat at the table with two cups of tea. It tasted a bit like dust. The stack of books from her parents' house was still on the table where she had left it during a brief visit two days ago.

"I've been busy," Tonks countered. "Anyway, the commissary at the Ministry isn't half bad, Molly usually brings food to the Order meetings, I can go to my parents' house for a proper meal, and the entire arrangement prevents me from having to try and explain how I burned down the building while making a cold salad."

"The light, though, that must be irritating," Lupin added, gesturing above them.

"I'm not really here enough for it to get annoying," Tonks replied. "And right now it's that or candles."

"I think I'd prefer the candles," Lupin said, then froze as they both noticed the subtext of the statement, intentional or not. "I think I'd better go," Lupin blurted. "Good night, Tonks."

"Wait," she called, but he was already gone.

* * *

><p>Tonks was in a terrific mood. She had thought that she would be unable to sleep after forming a habit of defying fatigue at every turn over the past several days, not to mention her unsettling run in with the Dementors, so she was pleasantly surprised when she woke up completely refreshed the next morning with no memory whatsoever of actually getting into bed.<p>

A check on the time told her that she had missed an Auror meeting that morning, which was usually punished with a week of street patrol duty. Figuring that the damage was already done, Tonks set about a leisurely breakfast in a coffee shop near her flat and strolled into the office over an hour later to discover that Shacklebolt had covered for her at the meeting and she would not be walking the beat on the streets of London after all. The rest of the day was spent in a fascinating and all consuming discussion with a few other junior Aurors and some seasoned Aurors who had just returned from some undercover work, charting the known movements of the Death Eaters they were surveilling.

Tonks was hardly even fazed when an owl from her mother arrived that afternoon, requesting her presence for dinner that evening. However, when the appointed hour arrived and Tonks found herself raising key to lock at her parents' door, her optimism faltered, but she quickly hitched it back into place and stepped inside, refusing to let Malfoy ruin her day.

The sniveling weasel was sitting exactly where she had left him, but he was reading _The Red Badge of Courage_ this time, so Tonks could only assume that he had moved at some point.

"Oh, good, you're here," Andromeda said, poking her head out of the kitchen. "Be a dear and set the table, will you?"

Tonks obliged, quietly amused at this development: her mother rarely trusted her with the fragile tableware.

"You're in a good mood," Andromeda observed from where she was transferring food into serving platters in the kitchen. "What's his name?"

"What?..Who?" Tonks stammered, catching on very slowly indeed. "Mum, will you please lay off about – Why was that your first – I got a good night's sleep, alright? How could you tell, anyway?"

"Your hair is orange," Andromeda replied.

"Aw, man, how long has it been like that?" Tonks exclaimed, examining her reflection in the back of a spoon to make sure she changed it back to pink properly. It had been a very long time since her hair had last displayed mood ring properties and she was not at all pleased to find the trait reemerging.

"Where's Dad?" Tonks asked when she was satisfied with her hair, hoping to change the subject.

"He's finishing up a few things in the office," Andromeda replied. "He'll be here soon."

"Why did you ask me to come?"

Andromeda lowered her voice. "It's Draco, I don't think we're getting through to him. He won't talk to us, and I can't tell if he's listening. We thought you might have better luck."

With a huge effort, Tonks managed to resist the urge to point out the fact that she had told them so and instead replied, "I'll see what I can do."

Dinner itself was an awkward and largely silent affair. Ted Tonks was the type of person who preferred just to listen in these types of situations, and though he did make a few game attempts it mostly fell to Andromeda and Tonks to maintain the conversation, and Tonks wondered uneasily what it was like when she was not there. They soon discovered that they really did not have much to discuss, and they could talk about even fewer topics with Malfoy present, so once they exhausted the weather and the prospects of the Holyhead Harpies in the next Quidditch World Cup they found that they had very little left to say. Malfoy himself was no help, of course, and Tonks was slightly surprised and put out when the topic of Quidditch proved insufficient to draw him into conversation. The largest response anyone got out of him was a satisfied look when Tonks asked him directly how he thought he had done on his O.W.L.s, which at least gave her an idea on how to proceed.

When they were finally dismissed from the table, which could not possibly have happened soon enough, Tonks followed Malfoy back to his usual pace on the sofa.

"Would you like me to just arrest you? Get it over with?" she asked sharply before he even had time to open his book.

"What are you doing here?" she pressed. It was nearly enough to surprise him into a response and Tonks smiled inwardly as she watched him bite down on his words. Progress.

"I'm serious," Tonks continued, "you're like a parasite. You sit on my parents' couch all day and eat their food and read my books and sleep in someone's bed, and what are you actually doing?"

Malfoy's look had grown surly, time to bring it around to the point.

"You're sixteen years old, you don't need a babysitter, yet your mother sent you here. Do you have any idea why?"

Malfoy stared irritably at her for a moment, then dropped his gaze and admitted, "No."

"Then I suggest you stop being angry about your current situation and start trying to figure out why you're in it," Tonks said. "Of all the places your mother could have sent you: the rest of her family, your father's family, your friends from school, she sent you here, to her estranged sister. Why?"

Tonks could see the wheels turning as Malfoy pondered that, but she knew better than to request his conclusion. Instead she asked, "What homework did you get saddled with this summer?"

An angry look.

"I guess you've already finished it all, then, if you've got time to sit around reading books all day."

A guilty look, hastily disguised.

"No? Well, I don't know if anyone's told you this, but I am an Auror. That means two things which are of immediate importance. The first is that I know a hundred and seven different ways of knocking you unconscious right now. The second is that I scored Outstanding on five N.E.W.T exams."

"Why do you want to help with my homework?" Malfoy asked.

"Wait until after you've left Hogwarts," Tonks replied truthfully. "I promise there will come a day when the only thing you want in the world is the simplicity of a homework assignment. Now come on, what have you got? I'm an encyclopedia on any subject. Except Herbology, you're on your own if it's Herbology."

Finally convinced, or at least willing to find out what her help was worth, Malfoy fetched his schoolbag from the guest room and they spent the next few hours elbows deep in the tricky and subtle theory behind the transfiguration of sound.

"This is great," Malfoy gloated when he had finally grasped the fundamentals. "Granger won't know what hit her next year."

Privately, Tonks did not think so. This was one of the few topics she had observed where Muggle-borns typically outperformed students raised in the wizarding world, something about early exposure to Muggle electronic speakers making it easier to understand the nature of sound waves. Still, she made a mental note the offer the same assistance to Harry, Ron, and Hermione the next time she saw them. The other thing Tonks did in response to this was to go to her childhood bedroom and retrieve a book from the shelf. She tossed it to Malfoy on her way to the front door.

"Give that one a try," she instructed.

"_To Kill a Mockingbird_?" Malfoy replied, reading the title.


	4. I Come Seeking Knowledge

****Author's Note: Thanks very much to those who have left reviews. It means a lot to get feedback. I hope you all enjoy the next chapter.

**Chapter 4: I Come Seeking Knowledge**

It was a Sunday. Draco could tell because, for the second day running, Ted had not disappeared to wherever he usually went during the work week. Other than that, things were mostly the same. Draco had fallen asleep earlier than usual the night before, his mind on his conversation with Nymphadora, and when he woke up he thought he had an answer. As a bonus, he was also awake for breakfast.

"Morning," Draco said, sidling up to the table and taking some toast, eggs, and bacon from the serving platters.

"Good morning, Draco," Ted replied in a chipper, morning person voice. "There's coffee and tea in the kitchen if you want it."

Draco ignored this intelligence, though he felt that he could sorely use a cup of coffee, and selected an orange.

"Aunt Andromeda," he said, peeling his orange with a detached air, "you must meet a lot of people…"

"I heard your conversation with Nymphadora last night," Andromeda responded, spreading marmalade on her toast. "You're not here to spy on us. Guess again."

Draco scowled and tucked into his breakfast. Eventually, Andromeda and Ted returned to their conversation from before he arrived, a discussion of the articles in the day's Daily Prophet that Draco allowed to float around him without taking in any of it, at least until Ted came upon a summary of the week's Quidditch scores and let out a cry of dismay.

"Would you look at that! How do you lose by five hundred points?" he exclaimed. "I'm telling you, if the Arrows can't get their side together they'll be out of the running for the British Quidditch Cup before they can sneeze."

In spite of himself, Draco could not help but appreciate the timeliness of this news. His own favorite team, the Wimborne Wasps, was bitter rivals of the Appleton Arrows, and, unless he was mistaken, the two teams were set to play each other that very afternoon. Draco could not help but think that having his own Quidditch team run Ted's off the pitch might help alleviate some of his frustration.

Andromeda must have noticed his gleeful expression, because she turned to him and said, "Draco, have you left the house since you've been here? It's not far to the village, why don't you take a walk today? It's mostly Muggles around here, though, you'll have to change." Of course he would.

Draco had given up being surprised when he discovered that his cage was larger than he thought. Anyway, with no wand and no Muggle money, he could hardly escape, it was still a prison.

"I'll give you some spending money," Andromeda said, rifling through her purse. She handed over a ten pound note. Draco took it, mind whirling, but he was missing two essential pieces of information for his calculation: a sense of the cost of Muggle public transportation and any notion of where he was relative to his home in Wiltshire.

Andromeda and Ted spent the remainder of the meal suggesting places to visit in town, prompting Draco to finish up sooner than he might have ordinarily.

Outside, Draco adjusted the lay of his shirt and set off to the left. His Muggle clothes were well tailored but seldom worn and slightly too warm for the current weather. He was not used to the fit of them. With no clear direction in mind, he wandered along, making note of street names as he passed them so he would be able to find his way back. Eventually, he happened across a collection of shops lining a narrow street, selling clothes and books and records, along with a few restaurants. Draco passed by them all in favor of a nearby park.

There was a wide open field where people were kicking and throwing balls around and an area with slides and swings and screaming children. Draco found a shady tree and sat down beneath it facing the ball players. He tried to ignore the happy sounds of children at play, which was particularly grating to his perpetual foul mood.

Draco spent a few minutes watching a pick up football game materialize, but quickly grew bored with the ground-based sport and his thoughts began to wander. He was beginning to think that he should have brought along his most recent book after all, but he could not figure out why Nymphadora had thought he would enjoy _To Kill a Mockingbird_. He must not have been paying much attention to it because he was nearly half way through and could not remember a single mockingbird in the story, much less one that gets killed.

Then a dog accosted him.

"Well, Toby seems to like you, anyway," said a female voice from above. "That or you're just in his favorite spot. Mind if I sit down?"

"Ugh?"

She took that as a yes. "Name's Mallory."

"Draco."

"Like the constellation?"

Yes, like the constellation. So she was a geek in addition to being annoying.

"Pleased to meet you," Mallory continued, holding out her hand. Draco did not take it. "You some kind of hypochondriac or something?"

It was as good an excuse as any and Draco allowed her to believe it. He tried to think of the last time he had gotten into a conversation with a Muggle and came up empty. He also could not think of a single instruction from his parents on how to handle such situations. Wizard law forbade him from even explaining why he did not want to talk to her. Really, his only option was to leave.

"I haven't seen you around here before, Draco," Mallory said. The dog finished inspecting the perimeter allowed by his leash and settled down to watch of pair of people nearby, who were tossing a Frisbee back and forth, his tail twitching with interest.

"Visiting," Draco muttered.

"You don't talk much."

That hardly seemed to matter; Mallory was handling both sides of the conversation admirably.

"Where are you from, then?" Mallory asked.

"Wiltshire."

"Stonehenge, neat."

Stonehenge was the site of the first settlement of magical folk in Britain, all the old wizarding families could trace there ancestors there and many never left the general area.

"Never seen it," Draco muttered.

Draco risked a glance at her from the corner of his eye. She seemed to be about the same age as him, or perhaps a bit older, and a few ideas floated unbidden through his mind, but on the whole he did not think her very attractive, though he could see how someone else might.

The moment the dog had been waiting for arrived: the Frisbee floated past the hands of the nearer player and into catching distance for an agile dog. He sprang to his feet and Mallory only just caught hold of the leash in time to keep him from bounding off.

"Sit!" she shouted. "Stay! Heel!" But the dog continued barking and pulling against his leash until the Frisbee was retrieved and play resumed.

"Obedient," Draco observed.

"I'm the only one he doesn't listen to. Isn't that right you furry lump?" Mallory replied. "I'm just house sitting while his owners are on holiday. Wanted to earn a few quid before I go off to University. What school are you going to?"

"Um," Draco faltered, realizing far too late that he should have been prepared for that question.

"Well, clearly it's made an impression on you. Anyway, I suppose I've bothered you enough." Mallory got to her knees.

"My father's in prison," Draco blurted out before he realized what he was doing, but every witch and wizard in England knew that, he felt already that he was wearing a sign with this information around his neck, why should he not tell this Muggle?

"Blimey," Mallory breathed, sinking back to the ground. "What did he do?"

Draco was slightly surprised that this news did not send her running.

"He got caught trying to steal…something from a… a government building."

"No offense, but it sounds like he might have had it coming," Mallory replied.

If any wizard had said that, it would have been enough to send Draco into a towering rage, but for some reason, this time, it did not.

"I expect it sounded like a good idea at the time."

"What was he trying to steal?" Mallory asked.

"It would take too long to explain," Draco replied. Also, he did not know.

"Do you have someplace else to be?" Mallory pointed out, looking prepared to settle in for a lengthy tale.

"What's it to you?" Draco snapped.

"You brought it up," Mallory muttered.

In no mood at all to explain, Draco stood up and walked away. After a few steps he briefly considered going back and apologizing, but instead he walked slowly back to the Tonks residence.

Ted answered the door and Draco's knock then hurried back to the sitting room and sat hunched in front of the wizarding wireless, listening intently. The Quidditch match was just beginning. By the time Draco changed back into his robes and returned the Wasps were already up thirty points.

"You're a Wasps man, I take it," Ted said, catching Draco's look of glee.

Draco hesitated, weighing his options, but this was too perfect an opportunity to brag for him to pass it up.

"My father is good friends with the owner. He's made many generous donations so we get box seats whenever we like."

"So you like them because your parents told you to and you get to spend your summers following them around," Ted inferred. "Illuminating."

"What's your fascination with the Arrows, then?" Draco muttered, irritated that Ted had taken such a view of the matter.

"They play fair, clean games, even when their opponents don't," Ted replied.

"Clearly that doesn't win matches," Draco pointed out.

"Sometimes it does, and even when they lose they do so with their heads held high," Ted said. "Even when things are going badly for them, they never give up. In my book, that counts for something. And there you go, it pays off."

The Arrows had just scored, bringing the score to ten to seventy. Draco could not understand what he was so excited about.

They settled in to listen and, in Draco's case, pen another letter, though he quickly realized that listening to a Quidditch match requires a rather different level of concentration than watching it, and his options were to either abandon any hope of quick progress on his letter or lose track of the game for minutes at a time. By the time Ted turned off the wireless and declared, "You got us this time," Draco had only written a few sentences.

_Nott,_

_How long do you reckon we'll have to wait until our fathers escape from Azkaban? I can't imagine having a worse summer. At least your mother didn't banish you to live with your Muggle-loving relatives. The smell around here is awful._

Draco read these lines with satisfaction, though if he were truly honest the Tonks house did not any worse than anywhere else, in fact it was far better smelling than some places he had been, it was just the sort of thing one said. He continued writing.

_It's too bad that Dumbledore disbanded the Inquisitorial Squad, but at least I'm still a Prefect, so I can terrorize a few first years and Gryffindors that way. I'll leave the Ravenclaws to you._

Here things got tricky. What Draco really wanted to know was new information on the Dark Lord's current strategy, and an idea of when he might be able to join the Death Eaters, but he could not ask so plainly. Even if Andromeda and Ted did not insist on reading his mail, there was no insurance that it might not be intercepted at a later point. He considered this for a moment, then put quill to parchment.

_Any news concerning our common purpose? I'm eager to join the cause, and I'm sure you are, too._

_Signed,_

_Malfoy_

_P.S. The Wasps just won another match. How do you fancy the Kestrels now?_

Draco read the entire letter once more, deemed it satisfactory, rolled it up, and took it outside to Quicksilver.


	5. Change

**Chapter 5: Change**

Nearly a week later, things were still running smoothly for Nymphadora Tonks. She had returned home twice to tutor Malfoy and was actually seeing some improvement. On her most recent visit, Malfoy even passed the salt to her father at dinner, which was certainly progress. Meanwhile, Tonks had finally found a system which allowed her to meet all her commitments to both the Aurors and the Order of the Phoenix and still occasionally get a good night's sleep. The only downside was that she frequently caught herself with blazing orange hair; it seemed that her Metamorphmagus abilities were beginning to develop a mind of their own.

Now Tonks was back in Professor McGonagall's sitting room, waiting for the next meeting of the Order of the Phoenix to start and deeply regretting that she had arrived so early. It was the first meeting of the Order since her run-in with the Dementors and nearly everyone there seemed to be taking the opportunity to praise, congratulate, or thank her, particularly a very grateful Hestia Jones. Tonks had been excited and gratified by this turn of events for all of about five minutes, after which it wore off very quickly indeed. She dearly wished that everyone would leave her alone for long enough for her to think up an excuse that would allow her to escape and was also becoming very uncomfortably aware that every single person in that room could be relied upon to do the exact same thing if presented with the same situation, and most of them could have handled it better. It was really only bad luck that had given her patrol duty that night.

All told, Tonks was very grateful when Dumbledore finally called the meeting to order and made no further mention of her alleged heroics from a week earlier except to remind those present that her Patronus had changed form from a bear to a werewolf. Tonks was rewarded for her patience, for what followed was the conclusion of the previous meeting, which she had interrupted, then, finally, the discussion of tactics and strategy she had been hoping for. She watched with rapt attention bordering on awe as Kingsley Shacklebolt and Mad-Eye Moody stood up to describe the tactics and fighting styles they had observed during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. They also called upon Lupin and Tonks to describe their own parts in the fight. Tonks was certain that her hero image suffered from her account of her short duel against Bellatrix Lestrange and was much happier for it. The feeling only lasted a few minutes, however, because shortly thereafter Lupin reached the point in the story where Sirius fell through the veil.

Dumbledore tried to continue, but he must have sensed that no one was in the mood for discussing strategy after that because, far earlier than usual, he ended the meeting with the words, "Thank you everyone for your attention. I believe we have Molly Weasley to thank for the wonderful aroma that is currently distracting us. Miss Tonks, a moment of your time, if you please."

Now that she was aware of it, Tonks wanted very much to investigate the kitchen with the rest, but she was even more curious about what Dumbledore wanted to say to her. Lupin joined Professor Dumbledore as she approached. This was a pre-arranged meeting, then.

"Miss Tonks, we have need of your particular talents," Dumbledore began, leading them into a quiet corner.

"Go on," Tonks replied, but her mind was already steps ahead. He could only be referring to her Metamorphmagus abilities, meaning that they needed someone to assume a disguise without using Polyjuice potion or transfiguration, and Lupin's presence probably meant that werewolves were involved.

"There is a werewolf in Fenrir Greyback's pack who wishes to defect," Dumbledore explained. "We need someone to take her place while we usher to safety. She is a close companion of Greyback's, you see, and her absence will not go unnoticed for long."

"Um, when you say 'companion,'" Tonks interrupted.

"Nothing untoward, of course," Dumbledore assured her quickly. "I refer to her position as confidante and advisor." Relieved, Tonks nodded and waited for him to continue. "All told, I anticipate that we will need at least twelve hours to transport her to a safe location. She has agreed to provide us with information in exchange."

Tonks' brown crinkled. Twelve hours was an awfully long time for a fully qualified witch to travel anywhere, and with all the speed of her Auror training, Tonks was beginning to work out why it was necessary.

"Does Polyjuice potion work to make someone look like a werewolf?"

Nearby, Lupin twitched restlessly but remained silent.

"Yes," Dumbledore replied. "But only in that person's human form."

"When are you planning for all this to take place?" Tonks pressed.

"In approximately two weeks' time," Dumbledore said.

Tonks suspected that she did not really need to ask the next question. "When is the next full moon?"

"I can see that you have already deduced some of our plan," Dumbledore said. "Our notion is that the pack will be much less likely to notice their defector's absence while in wolf form, and even if they do they will be incapable of mounting an effective response. Of course, she will also be unable to escape while in wolf form, hence the need for the switch."

"Then I'll need to be able to appear as a werewolf too," Tonks inferred.

"Or a careful subterfuge," Dumbledore confirmed. "You must convince the pack that the defector is still among them until the point when they transform. Once that has been accomplished you will be able to escape at your leisure."

"This is starting to sound like a complicated plan," Tonks pointed out. There was also the fact that she could not think of a single leisurely thing about the idea of escaping from a pack of bloodthirsty werewolves. "I'm not sure if I can appear as a werewolf, I've never tried it before."

"This is too dangerous, Professor," Lupin finally chimed in, and Tonks was grateful that he said so. The very real possibility of being bitten in the course of events was weighing heavily on her mind, but as an Auror it was not in her DNA to complain about such things.

However, Dumbledore and Lupin soon fell into a discussion on the subject that, from the sound if it, they had already had several times before. Tonks finally put an end to it by asking, "This information she has, will it help?"

Lupin took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"We believe so," Dumbledore replied.

"Then I'll do it," Tonks said.

Dumbledore looked greatly cheered. "In that case," he said, "Remus has agreed to assist you in your preparations, and I am at your disposal as well. But for right now, if you'll excuse me, I simply must find out what that delightful smell is."

"So who is she?" Tonks asked when Dumbledore had left, turning to Lupin.

"Her name is Rachel Munroe," Lupin replied, pulling a photograph from his pocket.

Tonks stared. "I know her," she breathed. "We were at Hogwarts together. She's a good person, or she was. We worked together in Charms sometimes. I had no idea."

"If you're too close to this…" Lupin began.

"Are you kidding?" Tonks replied, snatching the picture out of his hand and striding off in the direction of the nearest mirror, which happened to be in the bathroom in the front hall. Boldly, Lupin followed her inside. "There's nothing that can stop me now," Tonks informed him as she set to work on her nose.

"I'll be there with you," Lupin said after watching for a moment.

Tonks gave him a mismatched look, with a nose and one eye that belonged to Rachel. They both knew that at the moment when it really counted, he would simply be unable to do anything to help.

"I'll take Wolfsbane," Lupin continued.

"What will the rest of the pack thing about that?" Tonks pointed out.

"Let me worry about it," Lupin said.

"Don't take any foolish risks on my account," Tonks replied, turning her attention to her hands.

"Why not?" Lupin said, "You've taken a few on mine."

"Who's counting," Tonks shrugged. "How tall is Rachel without shoes? There's no reference in this picture."

Lupin through for a moment then held his hand up to about the level of his nose. Tonks took a breath and increased the length of her legs by a few inches, then the length of her arms to maintain proportion. Lupin was watching, so she tried to mask the pain of it, but changing the length of the bones of her arms and legs was a different matter from modifying skin and muscle and making subtle changes to the bone structure in her face. She was not much looking forward to enacting a werewolf transformation for that very reason. Besides, getting used to using longer limbs was a tricky matter that made a large contribution to her reputation for clumsiness.

Tonks was taking her usual approach to getting used to different limbs, rocking around on her feet, balancing on one leg, touching her knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders with her eyes open and closed, when Lupin apparently realized that they were standing in the confined space of a bathroom in Professor McGonagall's house and broke the silence.

"I like your hair."

This was an odd thing to say, given that Tonks had already changed her hair so that it exactly matched Rachel's in the picture, and it was extremely tangled and tousled to boot, a fact Lupin quickly realized.

"I mean the way you had it earlier, with the orange color. It reminded me of the sun, actually. I could always tell when you were in the room because you lit up the place."

Tonks had to think about this for a moment before she realized that Lupin was making a joke, not a very good one, perhaps, but all the funnier because it came from such an unexpected source. She could not help but laugh.

"My hair wasn't actually glowing, was it?" Tonks asked.

"No," Lupin replied, smiling along with her. "It was just orange, it made you look happy."

"Well, the sun's yellow," Tonks pointed out, her laughter dying away.

Lupin did not respond. He was giving her a strangle look in the mirror, one she did not recognize until she realized that this might be the first time he had ever seen Rachel smile. For a moment, she wondered who he was looking at. Tonks turned away from the mirror, cleared her throat, and tried a few experimental noises.

"This is Rachel's voice as I remember it from Hogwarts," she said at last. "Am I close?"

"That's eerie," Lupin replied.

"I can learn her movements from this picture," Tonks said. "It's the werewolf form that I'm really worried about. Do you have any pictures of her when she's trans-" Far too late, Tonks realized that she had really stuck her foot in it. Of course Lupin would not be able to take a picture of Rachel in werewolf form, and it was far too dangerous for anyone else to take a picture for him. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"Unfortunately, I'm not much of an artist," Lupin replied. "I'll have to describe her to you. Shall we meet three nights from now? The pack tends to get suspicious if I'm gone for too many days in a row. I'll speak to Dumbledore about using a classroom at Hogwarts."

"Fine by me," Tonks replied, taking careful stock of the changes she had made to her appearance then reverting to her usual self, orange hair and all.

"Perhaps we should leave one at a time," Lupin suggested, his attention on his feet.

"What?" Tonks exclaimed. "Grow up. Everyone's probably left by now, anyway."

Without waiting for a counterargument, Tonks charged out, dragging Lupin along with her. At least half the Order was milling around nearby. It seemed that they had hung back to be regaled by one of Mad-Eye's many stories, but now all eyes turned to Lupin and Tonks. With nothing else for it, Tonks decided that she might as well have a bit of fun by adding some confusion to the situation, so she slugged Lupin on the shoulder, hard, and then strode out the front door. As the door closed behind her Lupin stammered, "That wasn't what it looked like." She thought that she also heard some scattered applause.


	6. News from the Front

**Chapter 6: News from the Front**

"How is the Auroring business these days?" Draco asked after dinner. Nott's response to his letter had been brief and to the point: _My mother's dead, you prat._ Draco had forgotten that fact, if he had ever known it, and it left him in the position of trying to wheedle information out of a still more unwilling subject.

"Splendid," Nymphadora replied, her face expressionless. "I helped arrest a few dark wizards just recently."

Unfortunately, Draco could not tell whether or not she was lying about this.

"Where was this?" Draco pressed.

"Do you read the _Daily Prophet_?" Nymphadora responded.

He did, it was about the only reading material in the house that still interested him, but there were so many recent reports of Auror activity that it was of no help.

Draco had long known that the cousin his parents held in such contempt was and Auror, but for some reason he had never before considered the fact that she would do any actual fighting. He felt a faint prickle of apprehension in his gut as he contemplated the likely outcome if it ever came to wands between them.

Still, if things continued as they were going, it was perhaps inevitable that the two of them would eventually meet in violence. Would she be the one who some day burst through his doors, or would he burst through hers?

"So what homework have you got left, then?" Nymphadora said.

"Do you know anything about Ancient Runes?" Draco asked hopefully, pulling out the book.

"Not a thing, I'm afraid," Nymphadora replied. So much for her being an encyclopedia on any subject. "But my Dad does, he still brags sometimes about getting an outstanding on that N.E.W.T. He's a cryptographer now, you know."

"I didn't," Draco said.

Nymphadora sat watching him, probably enjoying his dilemma: struggle through his homework on his own or ask a Muggle born for help. He decided not to give her the satisfaction.

"Professor Binns wants three rolls of parchment on the roll of wizards during World War II," Draco said dully, reaching for his History of Magic textbook instead.

"You're taking N.E.W.T. level History of Magic?" Nymphadora asked. "Are you some kind of glutton for boredom or something?"

"My mother insisted," Draco muttered. "Said it was family tradition."

"Mum!" Nymphadora shouted unexpectedly. "Did your parents make you keep taking History of Magic after your O.W.L.s?"

"They tried," Andromeda called from the kitchen.

"So I take it you never did this assignment," Draco said, resigning himself to completing the essay on his own.

"Not so fast," Nymphadora replied. "I might not have done the History of Magic N.E.W.T., but no less than fifteen dark witches and wizards tried to make names for themselves during that time, and it was the worst breakdown in magical secrecy since wizards first separated themselves from Muggle society, I studied the time period during Auror training. Now, this was a Muggle conflict, so if I were you I'd start with that side of it, give yourself some framework."

"I don't care what the stupid Muggles did," Draco complained, tossing his textbook heavily on the table.

"Like it or not, what Muggles do changes us, and what we do changes them," Nymphadora said. Draco was getting very weary of her sanctimonious, know everything attitude. "There are examples all through history. What Muggles did during those years, some of it was terrible, and some of it was great, sometimes it was both, depending on your perspective, and for wizards it was the same. Magical or not, what people in England did during that time was amazing, the way they banded together and fought back even through it seemed hopeless, you could learn a few things."

Draco considered this for a moment, then said, "Merlin, you are a Hufflepuff."

"Not the point," Nymphadora groaned. "But yes, I was, and proud of it, though mostly I figure I was just too much of a weirdo for any of the other houses to take me. Now do you want help on this essay or not?"

When Andromeda appeared two hours later with two mugs of hot chocolate and a plate of biscuits, Draco was half a parchment deep and Nymphadora was searching for more information in a stack of books she had retrieved from her father's study.

"How do you think Binns grades these essays?" Nymphadora asked suddenly.

"What?" Draco said, straightening up, his stiff back cracking.

"Well, he can't handle the parchment himself," she replied, breaking a biscuit in half against the plate and nibbling at it. "Do you think he has someone lay them all out so he can read them? Maybe someone just reads them to him, or maybe he doesn't grade them at all and someone else does."

"I just wish they'd replace him," Draco muttered, stretching out his cramped writing hand.

"They can't," Nymphadora replied. "There's no one to replace him. As far as evil plans go, it's fairly diabolical: make the subject seem so boring that no one wants to learn it, and he gets to keep his job forever. I wonder if he did that on purpose."

"You ask a lot of questions," Draco pointed out.

"It's good fun, you should try it sometime."

"Are all Aurors secretly philosophers?"

"Good start and the answer is an emphatic 'no,'" Nymphadora replied. "Do you suppose this is how normal cousins act around each other?"

"Dunno, I've never had a normal cousin." It might have been the most honest thing he had said since leaving Hogwarts for the summer, probably even longer.

"Ever think about what you want to do when you finish school?" Nymphadora asked, taking a bite of the other half of her biscuit.

Draco carefully set aside his quill and picked up a biscuit because he needed to stall long enough to think of an answer. Ever since the Dark Lord's return, he had known that he would follow his father and become a Death Eater, acquit himself admirably in the coming war, and earn a position of power in the Dark Lord's service, but this was not the sort of thing one told an armed Auror.

"Probably something to do with potions," Draco replied at last. "It's my best subject."

"The Healers are always looking for skilled potioneers to identify new poisons and create antidotes for them," Nymphadora suggested.

Draco could not think of a less interesting way to spend his career, so he decided to change the subject.

"Why did you decide to become an Auror?"

"I was recruited out of Hogwarts," she replied. "Someone has to keep an eye on the dark wizards, and I had the skills."

"That sounds like the answer you'd give a nosy reporter," Draco said. "What's the real reason?"

"I can't stand the banner of hate and bigotry all dark wizards seem to rally around," Nymphadora grumbled. "It makes my teeth itch."

"Close, but still not the real reason," In fact, Draco was sure of no such thing, but in that moment he knew that if he asked she would answer.

"You're too young to remember the first war. I'm not. It wasn't a hard decision."

"Ever wonder what else you might have done?" Draco asked.

"No," Nymphadora replied, and to Draco's ear her response was too quick, too emphatic. He pressed his advantage.

"Don't you ever think, though, that maybe you ought to change sides before it's too late?"

"Never."

"You can't win. The Dark Lord's already been killed once, and he came back. As long as he's around, you can never win, and he can't die."

"The difference between us, Malfoy, is that I'm fighting for something more important than my skin."

"And what about when you've lost this war and all your lofty ideals and your skin is all you have left?"

"Then I'll keep fighting, for as long as I have a heart and lungs and a brain, and maybe even after that. How about you?"

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

"Malfoy, I am fighting because I don't want to get to the end of this thing and look back and realize that there's something I could have done but I didn't."

Nymphadora stood and strode quickly from the house. Satisfied, Draco gathered up his book, parchment, quill, and ink, and took them to the guest room. He reemerged a minute later and settled on the sofa with _A Farewell to Arms_.


	7. Defend

**Chapter 7: Defend  
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Tonks found her upcoming mission to rescue the werewolf Rachel Munroe to be all consuming, and as a result she was reprimanded several times over the next few days for lack of attentiveness while she was at work as an Auror, once even by Kingsley Shacklebolt. That last rebuke was probably well deserved, however: he had caught her experimenting with changing her hands into wolf paws at the back of a meeting. All in all, Tonks was coming to deeply regret that she could not tell any of her coworkers that she was moonlighting as a member of the Order of the Phoenix; it certainly would have helped in situations such as this. As things stood, however, Tonks knew that a stiff punishment would be coming her direction just as soon as her superiors had time to think of it.

For the time being, the entire Auror office was busy enough to let a bit of absentmindedness in an otherwise valuable agent slide temporarily. The Ministry had recently distributed several pamphlets describing precautions the magical community should be taking in light of Voldemort's return and asking for assistance in locating possible Death Eaters or cases of people under the Imperius curse.

So far, this had been of very little use to the Aurors in their law enforcement efforts but created much more work for them nevertheless. Many of the more nervous minded members of the population inevitably took to reporting every person who looked at them sideways, and all reports had to be investigated in case one of them was legitimate.

More often than not, however, people would swear they saw a Death Eater on their street, then, when the Aurors arrived, claim that the Death Eater had already left, but could the Aurors please help put an apparition jinx on their house. The junior Aurors had created a lengthy list of things they would like to do in those situations, and a betting pool soon materialized as well. So far, most people seemed to suspect that Ernest Savage, an Auror who joined the ranks a year before Tonks, would be the first to crack and commit one of the offenses on the list.

As a result of all this, Tonks was very grateful when the night of her meeting with Lupin finally came. She arrived directly from her last call of the day, where she had nearly lost a significant amount of money for herself by committing number seventeen on the list. Following the instructions Dumbledore sent her that afternoon, Tonks walked up to the gate to Hogwarts and sent a Patronus message to the castle. A few minutes later, Lupin appeared, striding down the path toward her.

"This is new," Tonks commented as he let her inside and they began the walk up to the castle.

"Professor Dumbledore's been enhancing security," Lupin explained. "He, McGonagall, and Snape have been putting up anti-intruder hexes I've never even heard of."

"Too right," Tonks approved. To her, like many others, Hogwarts was a sacred space, even when it was not filled with hundreds of young witches and wizards. The idea of it falling into the wrong hands was not something she wanted to think about.

"Anyway, how's the plan?" Tonks asked as they entered the castle and climbed the steps to the first floor. "Has anything changed?"

"Just one thing," Lupin replied with irritation in his voice. "I won't be using Wolfsbane. Dumbledore says that if I don't transform completely on the same night Rachel disappears it will be too easy for the rest of the pack to guess that I was the one who helped her."

"He may have a point," Tonks replied cautiously. Lupin held open the door to a classroom for her, and when she looked up at him she saw fear and anger. "Anyway, there's nothing to this. I'll just Disapparate at the first sign of trouble."

"When's the last time you Disapparated at the first sign of trouble?" Lupin scoffed.

He might have had her there.

"That's just with wizards. I'm a real coward when it comes to werewolves."

"No kidding," Lupin replied, stone faced.

"None at all," Tonks said, "not with all the gibbering and crying and pants-wetting, it's not pretty."

"Did you actually see anything, any bad or scary memories, when you held back all those Dementors?" Lupin asked.

"Yes."

"Sorry," Lupin replied, looking properly abashed.

"Are we going to get started or what?" Tonks demanded.

Unluckily, clothes and werewolf transformations did not mix in the slightest. Aware of this, both Lupin and Tonks had done a bit of forward thinking. Tonks had brought a long coat, and Lupin had set up a couple of chalkboards in the corner as a screen. Of course, gentleman that he was, Lupin respected her modesty as much as he was able, and banished himself to the opposite corner and faced the wall while she carried out the bulk of the transformation. In addition to that, he took advantage of the fact that she was frequently unable to articulate a verbal response and kept up a rather humorous running commentary about his observations of the werewolf pack.

"Fenrir Greyback is…" Lupin began, "he…well…you'll know him when you see him. Um, can you add a few silver streaks to the fur on your back? Bit lighter…there you go. Anyway, the rest of the pack, most of them are like your friend, they're not bad people by nature, they're just in a bad situation. Er, is your fur bothering you?"

Indeed it was, all the extra hair was making her feel more sensitive to everything she touched, even the slight air drafts in the room. More than that, she had an itch on her back that was becoming difficult to ignore, but her wolf shoulders would not rotate enough to let her scratch it. Lupin had probably deduced the issue when she inexpertly tried to use one of her back legs but still could not contort herself enough to reach.

"May, I?" Lupin asked, reaching out a hand. Tonks nodded, and he ran his hand down her narrow back. Before long the itch was gone, but she found herself hoping he would continue anyway.

Sooner than she would have liked, Lupin lifted his hand and asked, "Better?"

Reluctantly, Tonks nodded.

"Back to the pack, then, Greyback offers leadership, protection, and community when most of society hates werewolves and would rather pretend that they don't exist. I wouldn't expect you to understand, but it's a powerful draw. If several things in my own life had not gone exactly the way they did, I might be a true member of the pack instead of a spy."

Surprised, Tonks looked up at Lupin, an oddly different maneuver. Lupin, however, made no further comment on that subject and instead informed her, "Your eyes should be blue."

Tonks made the requisite change without looking away.

"That's very creepy," Lupin observed, and Tonks snickered, though it did not sound anything like she thought it would. "Also, you're eyes still look too human. Can you make your irises bigger? With wolves, and most animals, you usually can't see the whites of their eyes."

That was a tricky one. Tonks trotted over to a mirror they had propped against the wall to see what she could do. In the meantime, Lupin continued his exposition.

"There are about twenty werewolves in the pack and since this is taking place on a full moon all of them will probably be there. Anyway, this isn't like your Aunt's sewing circle." Lupin paused to reconsider. "This might be exactly like your Aunt's sewing circle."

Tonks tried to laugh, but snorted and sneezed instead. Trying to control a wolf body with a human brain was no easy task. When she had herself under control again, Lupin continued.

"My point is that some members of the pack are truly unpleasant to be around. I'll do everything I can to help you, but, honestly, it would probably be safest for you to just stick with Greyback, he looks out for Rachel."

Tonks turned around and allowed Lupin to inspect her eyes.

"Much better," he pronounced. "Your tail, though. I take it you haven't had much luck."

Tonks shook her head in the gravest manner she could manage. Despite having far more success in using her Metamorphmagus abilities to transform into a werewolf than she had dared to expect, try as she might it seemed that spontaneously growing the extra vertebrae required to form a tail was a step too far.

"Well, if all goes to plan then you'll be long gone before anyone has a chance to notice," Lupin supposed.

Tonks could not think of the last time everything had gone to plan and would have liked to have said so, but changing her mouth enough to actually form the words was far too much trouble to go to just to tell Lupin something he already knew.

"Can I take a look at your paws?" Lupin asked after a moment.

Obediently, Tonks sat back on her haunches, lifted her front paws for him, and immediately fell over. It was very fortunate for Lupin that he did not laugh.

"Sorry," he apologized instead, taking a seat on the floor nearby while Tonks got her feet back underneath her. "It's the tail I'm afraid, they're useful for balance. Why don't you sit and shake."

He held out a hand and Tonks placed one paw in it, but also informed him, in no uncertain terms, that she did not appreciate being commanded like a dog by reminding him who had the teeth. Of course, getting all of her teeth back into her mouth again took a bit of effort, but she only bit her tongue twice, a vast improvement over the last time she had tried this.

"Sorry," Lupin said again. "Do your paws bother you?"

Tonks moved her head in a so-so motion. She did not find it very comfortable walking on her fingers and toes, but she was certain that she had the bone structure right and so had planned not to complain about it.

"It might help if you make the pads on your feet a little thicker," Lupin suggested. "Also, I think you might be walking too far forward on your feet, if that makes any sense."

It did not, at least not until Tonks took a few tours of the room, experimenting with how she distributed her weight among her feet. She nodded at Lupin happily when she returned to sit in front of him.

"Great," Lupin said. "If you don't mind, there are some last things I should check."

Tonks nodded her consent and Lupin proceeded to inspect the rotation of her shoulders and elbows, her ears and forehead, the texture of her fur, and took a closer look at her teeth while Tonks tried to decide exactly how she felt about being poked and prodded all over. All the while, Lupin kept up his running dialog.

"There's one werewolf you should keep an eye on, aside from Greyback anyway, Marcus Bower. He was a tailor before Greyback got to him, but since then he seems to have taken to being a werewolf. He's always very vocal at meetings, and he's been giving Greyback money. He doesn't have any wealthy family, though, and he wasn't that successful as a tailor. I think he might be robbing Muggle banks. More than that, he's clearly jealous of Rachel's standing with Greyback. You'll have to be careful not to slip up around him."

Tonks nodded, but in truth she had not been paying complete attention, she had found Lupin's gentle hands on her arms, shoulders, and ears to be far more distracting than expected.

"Well, everything seems to be in order," Lupin declared at last. "I guess we should move on to the transformation." He stood, retrieved Tonks' coat from the floor, and draped it over her, then stepped away and turned his back.

It was well after midnight before Lupin declared Tonks' impersonation of Rachel transforming into a werewolf a success. Tonks was exhausted and sore at that point, and only the thought of a house elf or teacher finding her the next morning prevented her from curling up in the corner of the room and falling asleep still looking like a werewolf. Instead, she trotted over behind the chalkboard where her clothes waited and changed back into herself.

"Where is all this going to happen anyway?" Tonks asked when she was dressed. "You can turn around."

"Near St. Davids, in Wales," Lupin replied. "At least that's the last place I've heard. Greyback tends to change his mind a lot."

"When you say 'near St. Davids,' you mean close enough to cause some damage, don't you," Tonks inferred.

"I have two jobs," Lupin replied, leading the way out of the classroom, "convince werewolves to come over to our side and tell the Order where the pack is going to be on the full moon so they can warn and protect the people in the area. It's not glamorous work, but someone has to do it."

"I'm sure the people in those cities and villages appreciate it," Tonks replied, touching his arm.

"Thank you for your help in this, Tonks," Lupin said, shrugging away. "You…you put more heart into everything you do than anyone has a right to ask for."

"Aw, thanks," Tonks said, feigning bashfulness. "You're a good teacher. Anyway, and more importantly, do you think the house elves will make us some coffee if we ask?"

"I suppose they would," Lupin replied, "but you look dead on your feet, wouldn't some actual sleep serve you better?"

"Ordinarily I'd agree, but it's been over five hours since I last got called out to a dark wizard sighting. What's more, I'm about due for a legitimate one by now."

"Actually, there is one thing I wanted to mention," Lupin said.

"Okay," Tonks responded.

"Your smell."

"What?" Tonks asked, deflating slightly. It had been a long day, but she had taken a shower that morning, at least she thought she had.

"I mean, you smell fine," Lupin continued quickly. This sounded rehearsed. "But you don't smell like a werewolf."

"Oh," Tonks said. That did not sound so bad until she thought about it a moment and realized what a tricky thing it would be to manipulate her own scent. It was not something she had needed to bother about before, most people could not tell the difference, werewolves obviously could. "What do werewolves smell like?"

"Well," Lupin began, but not fast enough.

"Ouch, there you go." Tonks interrupted and quickly pulled a small object, the approximate size and shape of a pebble from an inner pocket, tossed it in the air, and caught it with a levitation spell. "Auror communications," she explained at Lupin's questioning look. "It can get pretty insistent if you ignore it for too long. Is there anything you can tell me about how I should smell in the next five seconds?"

"More musk, less flowers," Lupin summarized.

"I do not smell like flowers," Tonks replied. "Care to eavesdrop?" she invited as she grabbed and answered her communications device. "Ach! Merlin's pet gerbil, who invented this thing? Tonks here."

"Immediate assistance from all available Aurors is required," said Shacklebolt's voice from the stone. "Diagon Alley."

"Acknowledged," Tonks replied, checking her pockets for floo powder even though she knew that she had none. "Kingsley, I'm at Hogwarts, I'll need a few minutes to get off the grounds before I can Disapparate."

"You are authorized to use a Portkey," Shacklebolt replied.

Tonks felt her stomach drop. This was serious. Lupin touched her arm and caught her eye. "Um, Moony is with me, can he be of assistance?"

"Negative," Shacklebolt replied shortly. A moment later a loud crash sounded from the device Tonks held in her hand.

"I'm on my way," she said, unsure if Shacklebolt could hear her, and cut the connection. "Sorry, Lupin," she added, searching her pockets for something to use as a Portkey and eventually settling on her left shoe. "He's probably just worried someone might recognize you. Make sure the Order knows that something's going on. I'll get you more information as soon as I can."

"Be careful," Lupin said. It was the last thing she heard before her shoe yanked her out of the peaceful corridors of Hogwarts and dropped her at the edge of a war zone.

Never much good at the dismount when it came to Portkeys, Tonks missed her feet and landed painfully on her knees in an alley between two shops. This turned out to be a fortunate turn of events, because a figure she could not see properly in the dim light aimed a spell in Tonks' direction at the first sight of her, missing by inches. Abandoning her shoe, Tonks scrambled into the questionable but nearby cover provided by a waste bin and fired back. They exchanged spells for a few minutes, neither making much headway, until Tonks' opponent finally elected to take a manual approach and rushed her. Far from surprised, however, Tonks took the opportunity to rapidly trip, disarm, and tie up the assailant. A quick examination told her that he was no one she recognized, he did not have a Dark Mark, and he would not be able to escape his bounds without his wand, which Tonks picked up and pocketed for safe keeping before rushing out of the alley to join the rest of the fight.

A quick glance was enough to tell Tonks all she needed to know about the battle at hand. At least twenty Death Eaters or followers of Voldemort with lesser ranks were rampaging Diagon Alley, smashing storefronts, uprooting benches, and destroying merchandise and a handful of Aurors had taken up defensive positions to oppose them.

For the moment, Tonks had a distinct advantage over her fellow Aurors: she had arrived a short ways down the street from where the majority of the action was taking place, on the opposite side of the fight from the other Aurors, and no one had noticed her yet. Taking careful aim, Tonks managed to stun five of the looters before the rest cottoned on and she was forced to take cover. Now pinned down by a barrage of spells, Tonks could only hope that the other Aurors were taking advantage of the distraction, but the crash of another store window disintegrating was not a good sign. Tonks was just reviewing the layout of the fight as she'd last seen it, trying to pick the best place to Apparate to, when everything went dark, not just dark, but a black so thick that she could no longer see the flashes of spells, it was as though someone had turned off her eyes.

"What the…" Tonks wondered aloud, and then two pairs of hands grabbed her arms and pulled her back into the comparative brightness of Diagon Alley in the middle of the night.

"Wotcher," she said automatically to Fred and George Weasley as they ducked around the side of a building to watch the as spells emerging from the cloud became increasingly unfocused as those inside lost their bearings. Tonks itched to send in a few stunning spells, but restrained herself since she could not see where the other Aurors were.

"Peruvian darkness powder," Fred said, "what do you think?"

"Bet it works even better in the daytime," Tonks replied dryly.

"Daytime," George breathed, "why didn't we think of that?"

"Don't make fun," Tonks muttered, "how long does it last?"

"I was just saying to George, not fifteen minutes ago, how nice it would be to test some of our products in a real fight," Fred responded, "wasn't I George."

"It's true," George agreed. "Very obliging chaps, these."

"You're saying you don't know," Tonks inferred irritably. "What else do you have?"

Fred and George immediately turned out their pockets, of which they had a surprising amount considering that they were both wearing pajamas.

"Shield hats."

"Decoy Detonators."

"Self-guiding throwing stars."

"Invisibility cloaks, the cheap kind."

"Edible Dark Marks."

"And a boomerang, haven't worked out how to improve it yet, though."

Tonks resisted the urge to ask if they were taking this entirely seriously and inquired instead, "Anything that can tell the Aurors on the other side of this mess that I'm clear of the darkness powder and prepared to take down any looters who try and escape this direction?"

"Just this," Fred replied. He pulled out a piece of paper, hastily jotted down her message, folded it into a paper airplane, and tossed it in a high arc over the fray still contained in the Peruvian darkness powder.

"Brilliant," Tonks muttered, "You've invented the interdepartmental memo. Are you sure it will reach them?"

"You didn't think we tested our charm for self-guided throwing stars using actual throwing stars, did you?" George said.

As a matter of fact, she had, not that she would admit it now, and in any case the time for conversation had abruptly ended. It was just becoming possible to see into the dark cloud that crossed Diagon Alley, but more than that, the sounds from the space before them changed as the Aurors commenced their attack. Four looters emerged on Tonks' side and were promptly stunned, then all was quiet.

Tonks left the Weasleys, who were contemplating the damage to the nearby stores, and saw to the disarming and restraining of the stunned looters, working her way down the street until she met Shacklebolt in the middle of where the Peruvian darkness powder had been.

"Tonks," he said in greeting, bending to remove the wand from the slack grip of a final looter.

"Shacklebolt," she returned. "What do you figure?"

"I'm not sure yet," Shacklebolt replied. "Do you recognize any of these people?"

"Um," Tonks said, considering this and shining the light of her wand into a few nearby faces. "None so far."

"Well, we'll have a better idea once we've questioned a few of them," Shacklebolt decided. "Alright, you and Henderson assess the damage. Ask the owners of the looted shops for a list of what's missing. The rest of us will gather up this lot and see what they have to say for themselves."

"You've got it," Tonks replied. "There's another looter tied up around the side of Flourish and Blott's, so you know." She retrieved his wand from her pocket and handed it over.

"Tonks, where's you're shoe?" Shacklebolt asked as she turned to go.

Tonks, jumped and turned back, she had forgotten all about that. "Around the side of Flourish and Blott's, I suspect. I used it as a Portkey."

"Well you're bleeding pretty badly," Shacklebolt observed. "You must have stepped in glass. Go get it checked out at St. Mungo's, we can handle things here."

Tonks looked down in surprise. Up until Shacklebolt mentioned it, she had not noticed the injury. It still only barely hurt, and she did not like the idea of leaving with the job unfinished.

"I'm fine," she insisted. "I'll patch it up here and go to St. Mungo's when we're done."

"Alright," Shacklebolt relented, "but not a moment later."

Day was breaking properly and Tonks' foot was throbbing by the time she and Henderson finished interviewing the shopkeepers and made their report to Shacklebolt. Their findings were frustrating at best. Fourteen shops had been damaged in some way. Of those, ten had been ransacked, including Eeylops Owl Emporium, Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, Flourish and Blott's, and Ollivander's. Aside from the few owls that escaped in the chaos, not a single shopkeeper had found anything missing, not even so much as a cockroach cluster. Tonks and Henderson were completely stymied by this and Shacklebolt seemed near the end of his rope.

"Imperiused!" he exclaimed when Tonks asked about the prisoners. "Every last one of them. They claim the entire thing is a haze."

"You're sure?" Henderson pressed. Tonks was curious about that as well, they had been deceived by the Imperius curse in the past, though she was glad that Henderson had been the one to ask.

"We used Veritaserum," Shacklebolt replied, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

"Who are they, then?" Tonks asked. "They put up a fight; you have to train to get skills like those, Imperiused or not. Maybe there were Death Eaters nearby, controlling them through the fight."

"They are the Edinburgh Dueling Club," Shacklebolt sighed.

"You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

"Do you have all of the members of the dueling club?" Tonks asked slowly as a thought formulated. "Whoever cursed them would need access to all of them. Maybe whoever's missing is the Death Eater."

Shacklebolt looked up with interest.

"There are about to be a few Aurors who wish they were the ones to think of that," he said. "We've done all we can here. Henderson, report back to the office, Tonks-"

"I know, St. Mungo's," Tonks muttered.

"Actually, I need a word with you," Shacklebolt waited until Henderson had Disapparated before continuing in a confidential tone.

"Tonks, I've been reassigned."

"What?" she burst out. "Where?"

"10 Downing Street," Shacklebolt replied.

Tonks had to think very hard for a moment to realize what he meant. "The Muggle Prime Minister?"

"The very one," Shacklebolt confirmed.

"That's…" she had to search for the word "…great, important. Anyway, he's in good hands." But in spite of herself, Tonks could not help but realize that she was now the only regular Auror who was also in the Order of the Phoenix. She had not realized how much she had come to rely on Shacklebolt's strong and steady presence, now all that responsibility rested on her alone.

"Just remember to keep an eye out for anyone acting strangely," Shacklebolt said. "And if you think someone would be a good candidate to join the Order, point him or her out to Dumbledore or me. Good luck."

"You too," Tonks responded automatically, feeling numb.

"Now you should really get to St. Mungo's," Shacklebolt finished, and shoved her on her way.


	8. Who is the Greater Fool

**Chapter 8: Who is the Greater Fool**

"You're still here," Draco observed, sitting down under the tree in the park.

"Since last Sunday?" Mallory replied, tossing a ball for the dog. "Actually, I left and came back a few times."

"Fascinating," Draco said, "and what did you have for lunch yesterday?" Ordinarily, he would never have bothered with this Muggle, but he was feeling buoyed by his recent unsettling of Nymphadora and longed to do the same to Mallory.

"Turkey on rye," Mallory replied, undaunted. "Have you had a bowel movement yet today?"

This was not quite the lead-in Draco had wanted, but he rallied and tried again.

"How do you stand living here?"

"That's a 'no,'" Mallory replied. "Why so superior?"

"Well, it's not like there's anything to do here," Draco persisted.

"Alright," Mallory responded, getting to her feet. "I don't know who you've been staying with, but clearly you've never been shown around by a local. Help me get a leash on Toby and I'll give you the tour."

Draco did not want a tour, he wanted to demonstrate his supremacy over this Muggle, but she never actually gave him the opportunity to refuse and Draco soon found himself involved in a complicated bait and switch to try and catch the dog. It only worked on the third try.

Mallory led the way down the street, away from the Tonks residence and turned at the first perpendicular street they came to.

"Have you remembered the name of your school yet?" she asked as they walked.

"Mortgenstern Academy," Draco improvised dully.

"Where's that?" Mallory pressed.

"Scotland."

"I've never heard of it. Not Scotland, Mortgenstern."

"I'd be surprised if you had."

"How do you like it?" Mallory asked.

"They let in too much of the riff-raff," Draco said.

"There you go being superior again." She put on a dopey voice. "My name's Draco. I'm named after a constellation and I live near Stonehenge, therefore I'm better than everybody else."

"You wouldn't understand."

"Fine," Mallory grumbled. "Now to your left and right you'll see several shops. This is in fact the smallest of three shopping areas in town. The secondary school is nearby, so the students like to come here and use the alleys as a place to snog. If you keep your eyes peeled you just might see them. And we're walking."

"Which school are you going to?" Draco asked.

"The University of Melbourne."

That brought him up short.

"Wait, in Australia?"

"No, Melbourne, Russia."

"Why would you want to go to Australia?"

"I want to learn how to surf. All the government buildings are just over there, the library too. We could go inside if you like. There's also a small local museum around here somewhere."

"Don't change the subject," Draco interrupted. "If you want to learn how to surf, you go to Australia on holiday, not for school. It sounds like there's something here you want to get away from."

"I'm studying coral reef ecology," Mallory replied. "There's a pretty big one near Australia, you may have heard of it."

"Why didn't you want to tell me that?"

"You don't know me very well. I don't care if you know what I'm studying. Now do you want to find out where the cinema is or not?"

"Not really." Muggle movies held no interest for him.

"Why don't we stop for a coffee, then," Mallory suggested.

Draco readily agreed, since it afforded him the opportunity to continue questioning her.

"Great," Mallory said, leading the way to the nearest café, a small place at the end of the line of shops. It was deserted except for them and a few waitstaff. "You can buy."

"Why's that?" Draco demanded. "This is not a date."

"'Course it's not, you're far too irritating," Mallory replied. "We probably should have discussed my tour guide's fee beforehand."

They took seats on the patio of the café and ordered their drinks. Mallory looped the dog's leash around her chair leg and commanded him to lie down and stay that way, so he took the opportunity to investigate everything within the radius allowed by the tether.

"Wonder how long it'll be before they kick us out because of him," Mallory grumbled, raising an eyebrow at the dog.

"So," prompted Draco. "Any reasons you wanted to leave England besides the surfing and the coral reefs."

"Person can't just decide she wants to see the world? Learn new languages, that sort of thing?"

"You're traveling to an English-speaking country to learn new languages? Now I know you're lying."

"New cultures, then."

"Do you believe in fate?" Draco asked.

"No, the entire idea is silly," Mallory replied. "Why? I thought you said this wasn't a date."

"What if I told you that there is a very good reason why a person like you should want to leave the country?"

"Then I would ask you what that reason is, how you know it, and what you mean by 'a person like me.'"

"No, no, I've already said too much."

"You're full of it," Mallory replied.

Their drinks arrived and Draco took a sip of his.

"Am I?" he asked, beginning to enjoy this conversation. "You don't feel a sense of foreboding? The war's already started."

"Oh, now I get it," Mallory said. "You're a nut job. You hid it well, but you laid it on just a little too think right at the end there. So when is the world going to end this time?"

"No, I'm serious," Draco protested.

"I'm sure," Mallory replied. "So are you going to try and sell me something next, because you may have noticed that I'm a little tight on funds at the moment."

The dog started growling at something and Mallory tugged on his leash, but he ignored her and continued.

"I'm not trying to sell you anything."

"Then why are you telling me this?"

"I just want to find out why you're going to Australia."

"Why do you care," Mallory demanded. "And what is wrong with this dog? Somewhere around here there is a squirrel that is far too cheeky for his own good."

She turned to look in the direction that had Toby's attention and asked, "Someone you know?"

There was a figure, lumbering down the sidewalk, still too far away to distinguish.

"No, why?" Draco muttered, taking another sip of his coffee.

"Because he seems to be heading right for us."

"How can you tell?" The man was moving their direction, but to Draco's eye there was a stiff legged aimlessness to his gait, and the fact that they were the only other people in the area did not mean that he was specifically coming toward them.

The dog gave one bark and then was silent.

"He looks like he might be sick or something," Mallory said, watching the figure approach. "And is he wearing a suit?"

That detail actually did sound ominous.

"You know that sense of foreboding I mentioned?"

"What about it?"

"You're saying you don't feel it?"

"I think he needs help," Mallory said, and she stood, untangled the dog's leash, and set off.

"I think you need your sense of self preservation examined," Draco muttered, but he placed his ten-note on the table and followed.

As they approached, it became clear that the man was sick, but also that he was quite beyond help. With effort, Draco managed to dredge the name up from his memory.

"Inferius."

"Gesundheit."

"That's what it's called. It's a reanimated corpse."

"It's a zombie?" Mallory yelped, backing up two steps so she was level with Draco and the dog.

"Inferius."

"I prefer zombie." There was a definite edge to her voice now.

"I guess there's not much to worry about with just one of them," Draco admitted. They all backed up a step as the Inferius continued lumbering toward them. "It's when you get a bunch of them together that they can really cause trouble."

"I'm fairly certain I'm not asleep, so I think there's plenty to worry about," Mallory said. "For instance, how the hell does a corpse get reanimated in real life?"

That question did bear some consideration. Obviously, whoever sent it did not realize he was here, because the Death Eaters would not send an Inferius to menace the son of one of their own and everyone else was too morally superior to consider creating Inferi.

"Maybe Nymphadora's been more of a nuisance than I thought."

"Who?"

"My cousin, I'm staying with her parents."

"That's an odd name."

"I know," Draco snorted.

They took another step backwards.

"Fair warning," Mallory said. "If it comes down to it, I'm definitely going to trip you."

"Same."

"I'm glad we're in agreement. Toby's off limits, by the way."

"Why's that?"

"Have you ever tried tripping a dog? They have four legs."

Another step backwards.

"Are we going to try and do something about this or what?" Mallory asked.

"Us try and do something!" Draco demanded.

"You just said there was nothing scary about one zombie!"

"Argh!" they both shouted in surprise and alarm as they took a step and bumped into something that gave way behind them. Neither needed to turn and look to know that it was another Inferius, instead they turned and ran, eventually regrouping on the opposite side of the street.

Mallory was doing a convincing impression of a dog chasing its tail, trying to brush off her clothes where they had touched the Inferius.

"It was cold!" she protested, sounding sick.

Draco was struggling to get his heart rate and breathing under control and he tried and failed to repress a shudder at the reminder. As he watched, a third Inferius appeared near the café.

"What are they doing here?" he wondered aloud.

"Not the question I would ask at this particular juncture," Mallory said. "Come this way," she added, leading the way down the sidewalk.

"My Aunt and Uncle's house is back that way," Draco argued.

"So is the town graveyard and the mortuary," Mallory countered, grabbing him by the sleeve. "And the police station is this way."

"I'm sure the proper authorities already know what's going on," Draco said.

"I don't hear any sirens, do you?" Mallory asked, giving his arm another tug, and Draco allowed himself to be pulled along because it had just occurred to him that perhaps he ought to be concerned about what might happen if a team of Aurors turned up and found him there. He was only just beginning to recognize the strangeness of his predicament: wandless and in the company of a Muggle in an unfamiliar town, being menaced by a horde of at least four Inferi. The entire situation made him feel somehow left handed, like he was trying to do everything backwards.

"How many people around here have died recently?" Draco asked. He realized that he was being led along rather like the dog and shook his arm out of Mallory's grip.

"That depends on what you mean by 'recently' and 'around here,'" Mallory replied.

"I don't know," Draco said.

"Can't be many, anyway, this isn't a very big town."

"More or less than seven?" Draco pressed, glancing backward.

"Maybe there was a bad pileup on the motorway," Mallory suggested, sounding unconvinced. "What'll they do if they catch up with us?"

"How should I know?"

"You don't seem to find their existence impossible and you claim to know what they're called," Mallory pointed out. "Will they try and infect us? Eat our brains? What?"

"They'll probably just rip us apart," Draco guessed. "I suppose it depends on…" On the intentions of the person who reanimated them, was what he almost said. "Why are they still following us?" he grumbled instead.

"They're not very selective at your school, are they?" Mallory replied.

"What?"

"We're the only people around, and you're an idiot."

"Is that so?" Draco demanded, deciding that he had heard just about enough of Mallory's insults.

"That's alright, I am too," she replied.

Surprised, Draco turned his attention from the Inferi to Mallory and found her hovering uncertainly at the edge of the sidewalk, staring to the left down a cross street.

"Bugger," she muttered after a few moments of this, and set off to the right.

"What?" Draco asked, following.

"The police station is back that way," Mallory replied, gesturing behind them.

"I thought you said you wanted to go there."

"I do, but its three blocks from here and there's bound to be more people along the way, the largest shopping center is between us and the police station. The house I'm watching isn't far, we can call from there."

"It's still just the same seven following us," Draco said, taking a glance behind them.

"There's a piece of good news," Mallory replied, and then she added," this is ridiculous, what's going on?"

They reached the house under Mallory's care without serious incident. What few people they encountered cleared out of the way without much convincing. Inside, Mallory directed Draco to check the doors and windows while she made for the phone.

After completing his task, Draco settled himself in at a window overlooking the front of the house to watch the Inferi amble around the lawn. He was startled by a clanking noise but found that it was only the dog pushing a metal bowl around, more interested in his next meal than the situation outside. A few minutes later, Mallory joined Draco at the window.

"That didn't go well," she muttered. "The operator thought it was a prank. He talked to me like I was ten and told me how much trouble I could get in for calling emergency services when there's no emergency. I probably should have said there was an axe murderer or something instead."

"So no one's coming," Draco inferred.

"A stuffed bear to the kid from Stonehenge," Mallory grumbled. She walked away and started banging around the house, noisily opening and closing doors and cabinets. Draco remained at the window, cultivating an air of one driven to careful consideration and planning over thoughtless action in times of crisis. In truth, though, every idea he had ended with the fact that his wand was locked in a box in the Tonks house.

Mallory startled Draco out of his wandering thoughts by shoving a golf club into his hands. He had not realized that Muggles played golf.

"What's this for?" Draco asked, examining his club and another one that Mallory had kept for herself.

"Bashing their heads in," Mallory replied as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Not a chance."

"Suit yourself," Mallory said and made for the door. "I'm going to try and put an end to this before they get bored with us and go find someone with less sense."

"You're the one who hasn't got any sense," Draco exclaimed, unsure why he felt so strongly about this. "Someone will come, we just have to wait."

"They've had plenty of time," Mallory replied at the same volume, holding out her arms, and, inwardly, Draco knew she was right.

"Wait," Draco said, stopping Mallory with her hand on the doorknob. "If we make it out of this, I don't ever want to see you again."

"That goes double for you," Mallory said. "And one other thing. Have you really never met anyone who wants to go away just to see what it's like to not be here?"

"I guess not."

"You shouldn't ask questions you think you already know the answer to," Mallory said, and with that she threw open the door and charged outside.

Draco shut the door behind her, and then returned to the window to watch. Mallory was rushing at the nearest Inferius, poised to strike, when several people appeared from nowhere. Faster than Draco could think, one of them sent a spell at Mallory. She stopped and swayed on her feet, golf club still half-heartedly swung over her shoulder, her purpose erased along with her recent memories. The witches and wizards, who Draco now recognized as Unspeakables, set about gathering up the Inferi and Mallory still stood among them, empty-headed and confused. Draco was struck by something like pity and the urge to at least help her inside, but wandless and dressed in Muggle clothes, he knew that he would have his own memory erased the second an Unspeakable saw him.

With nothing left to do, Draco crossed to the back door, intending to sneak back to the Tonks' house, but as he was leaving he spotted Toby, lying on a pillow on the floor and gazing despondently across the room at his empty food dish. With a sigh, Draco released the doorknob. After a brief search, he found a bag of dog food and filled the bowl then, in a show of thoughtfulness that surprised even him, changed the water in the dish. Then Draco left.

* * *

><p>That evening, Draco finally broke down and knocked on the door to Ted's study.<p>

"No need to knock dear," came the call from within.

Draco rolled his eyes and entered.

"Draco!" Ted exclaimed. "This is a surprise. What can I do for you?"

Draco choked on his words, cleared his throat, and said, "Nymphadora said you're good at Ancient Runes?"

"Well, I don't like to brag," Ted replied.

"I can't make sense of this assignment," Draco said, holding up the undecipherable text and his abandoned translation. "Half the words don't make sense and the rest are in the wrong order."

"Alright, let's see what we've got." Ted took the page of runes, looked it over, and chuckled. "Good old Dr. Seuss. Professor Babbling does like her jokes."

"It's a joke?" Draco demanded, annoyed.

"It's a poem full of nonsense words," Ted explained. "No wonder you're having trouble. Professor Babbling also likes to make sure her N.E.W.T. students are truly dedicated, or resourceful."

"How am I supposed to translate a made up word?" Draco pouted.

"You're meant to work it out phonetically," Ted replied. "I probably shouldn't show you this, but…" He stood and left the room, returning with a bright red book, which he handed to Draco. It was titled _If I Ran the Zoo_ and had an unidentifiable creature drawn on the front. Draco opened the book and read a few lines that were actually somewhat similar to his own labored translation of the runes.

"Has this been in Nymphadora's room all summer?" he asked.

"I'm afraid so," Ted replied.

Draco groaned in frustration and made to leave with his newfound solution, but at the door he hesitated and turned back.

"What do you mean by 'work it out phonetically'?"

"Grab a chair from the kitchen," Ted invited. "Let's see what we can make of this."


	9. Breakdown

****Author's Note: I just wanted to say thanks for all the reads and reviews I've gotten. Happy holidays everybody.

**Chapter 9: Breakdown**

Tonks raised her hand to the door, gave herself one last chance to change her mind, and knocked. There were a few muffled shouts inside, and then Ginny opened the door.

"It's Tonks," Ginny announced in lieu of a greeting. "Come on in," she added at a more reasonable volume.

Mrs. Weasley and Ron appeared almost immediately, looking tense.

"Relax," Tonks said, observing them, "nothing's happened. I just wanted to have a quick word with you, Molly, if that's alright."

"Of course, dear," Mrs. Weasley replied. "Clear out, you two," she ordered Ron and Ginny, leading Tonks into the dining area and a seat at the table. "Would you like something to eat?"

"Thanks, but no," Tonks said, taking a seat. "I really can't stay long."

"Fred and George told me you were there the night Diagon Alley was looted," Mrs. Weasley said when Tonks hesitated. "Thank you for helping them."

"Anytime," Tonks replied. She pulled a sealed envelope from an inner pocket and tapped it against the table, wishing she had put more thought into what she was going to say. "Molly, this is a letter for my parents. I'm about to do something pretty dangerous. I was wondering if you would…I mean…just in case…it's pretty dangerous…"

Mrs. Weasley took the letter in silence.

"Of course," she replied after a moment, her voice thick. "What are you going to do?"

Tonks paused, considering. Despite being in the Order together for over a year, their paths did not cross often and Tonks was unsure if the Weasley matriarch was the type of person who was soothed by information , no matter how dire, or if she was better off not knowing in spite of herself. Eventually she decided on the former.

"There's a werewolf in Greyback's pack who wants out," Tonks explained. "I'm going to act as a decoy while the Order helps her escape."

"This is all happening soon?" Molly inferred.

"Tonight," Tonks confirmed. "I'm just waiting for word from Dumbledore."

"During the full moon," Molly said.

There was really no fooling this woman for long. Tonks was sorry to have doubted her, however momentarily.

"Hence the danger, and the letter."

Mrs. Weasley reached out and touched her arm. "Nymphadora, Dumbledore won't force you to do something you don't want to do."

"I know, he's not," Tonks replied. "I have my own reasons for wanting to do this."

"Remus?"

"No, no, he's been trying to talk me out of it, actually."

"That's not exactly what I meant, dear," Molly said.

"What?" Tonks asked uncomprehendingly, and then something in her head changed with a click that she could have sworn was audible. It was something she could not explain or describe, something related to her deep appreciation for Lupin, all the time she had gotten to spend with him leading up to today, and the way it had felt when he stroked her back while she was learning how to transform into a werewolf. It was something she felt she had always known, and only had to hear it out loud to recognize it. Tonks felt a goofy smile spreading across her face and contained it with an effort.

"I thought so," Molly replied, patting her arm. "I'll take care of this letter for you, but I'm expecting you to look after yourself and make sure I don't have to send it."

"I'll do my best," Tonks said, standing. "Thanks Molly."

Tonks stepped outside and immediately realized something else.

"Bad timing," she said to herself. "Terrible."

* * *

><p>"The key to nonverbal spells is concentration and intent," Tonks explained to Malfoy across the table at her parents' house, "otherwise everyone would walk around performing every spell that happened to cross their minds." She had been nothing but a bundle of nerves waiting around her flat for word from Dumbledore and eventually decided that a bit of Malfoy's homework would be an excellent way to release her energy. For his part, Malfoy had seemed surprised that she had returned to tutor him considering how their last meeting ended, but Tonks was not nearly as annoyed with him as she had lead him to believe. Rather, she had decided that there was a distinct advantage to letting a potential enemy think that he knew what buttons to push.<p>

"I've tried all that," Malfoy protested. Tonks eyed him steadily. "Back at school, I mean. My parents use nonverbal spells all the time; they've explained it to me. I've tried it and it never works."

"It's not enough just to think the spell," Tonks said, "you have to go through the same process in your mind that you would if you were going to speak aloud, then just not say it."

"But why?" Malfoy groaned, leaning back from his Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. "If you don't say it out loud, then why does the spell work?"

Finally, Tonks understood where Malfoy was going wrong and was only surprised that she had not realized it sooner. Nearly everyone she had ever met, herself included, had at one time been misinformed on this point.

"The spell doesn't matter. The words themselves, they don't mean anything."

"What?" Malfoy said, looking certain that she did not know what she was talking about.

"Did you think there's a pile of elves somewhere, elves who only speak ancient Latin, just waiting around, listening for your spells so they can pull the strings for you?"

"No," Malfoy muttered, with the air of someone who, however he actually thought magic worked, had just realized that his hypothesis was completely foolish. "Then what do we need to say the spells for?"

Tonks waited.

"Oh," Malfoy breathed at last. "Then you could just point your wand as this book and tell it to levitate and it would do it?"

"Maybe," Tonks said, drawing her wand. "Levitate!"

After a moment, the book lifted off the table a few inches, hung there, then settled gently back down.

Malfoy stared at the book, agog, then caught Tonks' eye.

"You said the spell in your head, didn't you," he sighed, disappointed.

"Yep," Tonks confirmed, smiling at him. "There are words in English and every language that will perform the Wingardium Leviosa spell, but most researchers are more concerned with inventing new spells than trying to find them. In the end, though, any words are unnecessary, they're just a way of using magic to do what you want without understanding exactly what you're doing. Someone with a more complete knowledge of magic than mine could perform any spell he or she wanted without using any incantations at all."

It occurred to Tonks suddenly that Dumbledore probably had this skill, but her feelings of confidence rapidly evaporated when she realized that Voldemort most likely did as well.

"You're smarter than you look," Malfoy said.

"You're not so bad yourself," Tonks replied genuinely, but suspicious that he was only pandering. "Keep all that in mind when you're back at Hogwarts and see where it gets you."

At that moment Dumbledore's Patronus flashed in front of them then just as quickly disappeared.

"What was that?" Malfoy yelped.

It was something that Tonks dearly wished Malfoy had not seen. "I have to go," she said shortly and strode out before Malfoy could ask any further questions and without pausing to say anything to her parents. Tonks stepped outside, locked the door behind her, and Disapparated immediately to the Hog's Head, where Dumbledore was waiting.

"Ah, Nymphadora, you made excellent time," Dumbledore said, standing up to meet her as she entered the pub.

"Yeah, well, I hit some traffic in London, but…" Tonks froze, realizing that she had just told the beginning of a joke to her former Headmaster. She must be even more nervous than she thought.

Dumbledore, however, only chuckled good-naturedly, but that only made Tonks more uncomfortable because she had no punch line.

"Made up some time in Leeds, though," she concluded feebly.

"That's the spirit," Dumbledore applauded, wiping a mirthful tear from his eye. "However, we must now move on to more serious matters. The werewolf pack has positioned itself near St. Davids." Dumbledore turned to a map he had laid out on the table and pointed out an area near the outskirts of the city. "In approximately half an hour, Rachel Munroe will invent an excuse to leave the pack for a short while and walk into the woods here." Dumbledore shifted his finger slightly on the map. "When she does so, Remus will send us a signal, and you will Apparate into the woods. Rachel will meet two Order members at a pre-arranged location and they will bring her to a safe place where she can be questioned and then transform. Do you have any questions?"

"No, sir," Tonks replied, taking a last look at the map and noting that Dumbledore had not told her any specific details about where Rachel would go or who she was meeting. In spite of his calm demeanor, Dumbledore was worried that Tonks would be discovered. This did not surprise or deter Tonks, she was worried too.

"Very good," Dumbledore said, probably aware of the thoughts that had just passed through her mind. He picked up a bundle of clothes and passed them over. "In that case, these are duplicates of the clothes Rachel is wearing tonight. You will find a staircase around the corner from the bar. The first room on the right is available for your use."

Tonks returned a few minutes later wearing Rachel's face along with her clothes.

"Well done," Dumbledore approved, looking her over. "I doubt even your mothers could tell you apart. Now, with your permission, I would like to perform a charm of my own invention which will cause your wand to stick to your forearm. The reason for this is twofold. First, there is nothing to be done for the fact that your wand and Rachel's are not identical, and I think you'll agree that it would be best to keep your wand in a place where it will be readily available for your use, but also where no one will immediately think to look for it. Secondly, for the duration of the charm, only you will be able to remove your wand from your arm. It will not simply fall off, including during your werewolf transformation, which I am told is very convincing."

"Thank you, sir, please go ahead," Tonks agreed readily, rolling up her sleeve.

Dumbledore performed the spell in a moment, simply by touching his wand to Tonks' and then to her forearm, and when Tonks held her wand to the spot it remained stuck there as though with a strong magnet. When she gave it a tug it came away easily, then reattached itself just as firmly when she brought it close again. Tonks thought of a half dozen additional uses for this charm in the time it took her to perform these experiments.

"Sir, do you think you could teach me this spell sometime?" Tonks asked, adjusting her sleeve so the wand was hidden.

"Certainly," Dumbledore said, looking pleased, "although I must point out that performing a spell on one's own wand is a difficulty for which I have not yet designed a solution."

Tonks shrugged, not all over her ideas involved sticking wands to things. Instead she said, "There are a lot of Muggles in St. Davids."

"Not to worry, we have the situation well in hand," Dumbledore assured her. "The magical population has been notified, those who chose to stay have agreed to help defend their Muggle neighbors, I myself have placed many wards around the city, and several Order members will be on hand. No one will get hurt." However, Dumbledore's expression rapidly changed and he added, "Nymphadora, I feel I must give you one last chance to walk away from this endeavor."

"Thank you, but I'm in," Tonks replied firmly.

"If I recall correctly, you and Miss Munroe were rather close while you were at Hogwarts."

"Close enough, sir."

"Very well," Dumbledore said. "I believe we can expect the signal any moment now."

They waited nearly a minute. Tonks spent most of it pacing back and forth on her too long legs while Dumbledore sat staring over his steepled fingers, eyes unfocused, looking at something that was not in the room with them. Finally, there sounded a soft whistling. Tonks nearly jumped out of Rachel's skin, but Dumbledore calmly removed his wand from his pocket and quieted it with a swish.

"That is our signal," he explained.

"Alright, good luck sir."

"And you."

Tonks strode outside and nearly Disapparated before her sense of self preservation got the best of her. "_What are you doing?_" it asked. She took a deep breath and turned.

She appeared in the woods. There was no sign of Rachel, not that Tonks had really expected to see her. Feeling as though she had left her stomach back at the Hog's Head, Tonks embarked on the longest sixty count of her life, but gave up and began making her way out of the woods when she got to twenty. It took longer than expected to find the gathering of werewolves and Tonks was beginning to suspect that she had gotten turned around in the woods when she came upon them at last.

Acting of their own accord, Tonks' eyes sought and found Lupin immediately, seated on the ground at the back of the assembly. The dopey smile she had first experienced at the Weasley house threatened to reemerge at the sight of him, but she forced it back and instead gave Lupin a covert wave, signaling that she was Tonks and not Rachel. He acknowledged her with a subtle nod and Tonks turned away to find a place to sit near the front. As Lupin had said, there was no mistaking Greyback. Even in his human form he reminded her of a wild animal, everything from his appearance to his movements to his words assured her that he would gladly rip someone apart at the slightest provocation.

Greyback was standing on a rock at the head of the gathering, gesticulating wildly as he drove home some point that Tonks chose to ignore for the time being. Against her better judgment, she chose to sit on a fallen log near Greyback's rock, as was Rachel's tendency. The sun was setting properly now and Tonks wished that she had checked an astronomy chart for the exact time of the moonrise, but she could tell from the energy of the pack that it would not be long now.

"Rachel," Greyback said suddenly, gesturing for her to come forward. Tonks reluctantly obeyed. "What do you think?" he said into her ear. The force of his foul breath was something no one had warned her about.

It was very difficult to think of a suitable response while also trying not to gag, but she managed it eventually. "They look hungry, Fenrir," Tonks said, trying to sound blood thirsty. "I'll bet a few people will get bitten tonight."

"A few!" Greyback laughed nastily, addressing the group at large. "I think we can make more than a few new werewolves tonight. And why shouldn't we? They shut us out, turn us away, leave us to starve, and we are the superior race!"

"Superior race!" someone from the crowd echoed. Based on Lupin's description, Tonks guessed that it must be Bower.

Tonks risked a quick glace at Lupin, curious about his reaction to all this and impressed that he could listen to such vitriol on a regular basis and still stay so sane. She had only spent a few minutes around Greyback and already felt a strong compulsion to take a very thorough shower. Lupin was not looking in her direction; perhaps he survived by allowing his mind to escape elsewhere.

"We must all play our parts in this plan," Greyback continued. "We must increase the size of our pack until we have enough werewolves to topple the Ministry. The Dark Lord has pledged to help us. With his help we will remake society in our own image. No longer will we sit out in the cold and the rain and the snow. We will make the laws and leave all those who opposed us out to starve."

Across the group, Lupin was moving his shoulders, head, and hands uncomfortably, and he was not the only one. The moon was close. So she would not stand out, Tonks copied the movements of the werewolves.

"Tonight, though, we hunt," Greyback continued, his voice a low growl, "and I will be very disappointed in anyone who has not bitten someone by morning. I'm sure you've noticed, however, that our hunts have not always been very successful recently, so I would like to try something new. In the city of Aberdeen, there is a central market that I'm sure you're all familiar with. Retrieve your wands. Before we transform tonight, we will all Apparate there."

All pretenses forgotten, Tonks stared at Lupin and he stared back. His look of horror was twin to her own. Her heart was beating so hard and so fast that she could hear it and she felt like all of her insides had turned to liquid. She had no ideas, no plan for how to save the people of Aberdeen, not even the beginning of one, and no time at all to think of one.

Tonks Disapparated to Aberdeen without waiting to hear another word. She appeared in the middle of the open air market Greyback had indicated, which was crowded with a few witches and wizards, but mostly with Muggles of all descriptions. Never before had the Statute of Secrecy been further from her mind. Quick as a flash, she sent a Patronus message to Dumbledore, then two more to Shacklebolt and Mad-Eye for good measure.

"Clear out!" Tonks shouted at everyone in earshot. "Get out of here, get inside! It's not safe!"

Only a few people moved and those only to give her a few more feet of space. Most of them were looking at her like they thought she was crazy. Options began occurring to her, one after the other, none of them possible. She could put an anti-apparition jinx on the area, but not on all of Aberdeen, not even all of the market, not by herself. There were far too many people for her to disguise or hide. She did not know any spells that would force them to take refuge indoors. Finally, Tonks came up with her first idea that could work: give the people a convincing reason to leave of their own accord and, hopefully, a few extra seconds to save themselves. The matter decided, Tonks undertook the fastest werewolf transformation she had yet attempted.

The result was immediate. Several nearby people screamed and tried to get away. Tonks encouraged this by snarling menacingly and snapping at heels wherever she found them, but the werewolf pack began to appear long before the market was clear. Lupin and Greyback were the last to arrive, and Lupin had several fresh scratches on his face and arms. From the looks of things, Lupin had refused to come, so Greyback had taken him side-along.

The sight of twenty additional people in the midst of transforming into werewolves was enough to spur the shoppers still on the street to greater speeds, which was fortunate because Tonks now had a decision to make. She could leave, which was really not an option at all, stand and fight, even though she was not impressed with her chances, or run and perhaps get the werewolves to follow her. However, she would then have to figure out how to lead the werewolves out of Aberdeen by a path where they were least likely to encounter any people, preferably without getting bitten herself, and all without a sure knowledge of the layout of the large city.

For the moment, the smell of humans must have been so strong and omnipresent that it confused the newly transformed werewolves, and none of them seemed to have noticed anything unusual about Tonks yet, but that would certainly not last long. If anyone from the Order had arrived yet, keeping their distance, probably concentrating on getting the people of Aberdeen to safety. Tonks wished she could get some indication of their plan, but none seemed forthcoming. Then Greyback, at least she thought it was Greyback, caught a scent that seemed to interest him and turned to face Tonks with menace in his eyes. All at once the time for thinking was over and the time to run had started.

Tonks ran as hard and as fast as her four ungainly legs would carry her. Greyback came chasing after her and, as far as she could tell, the rest of the pack chased after him. For a moment Tonks allowed herself to hope that this arrangement of the pack following its leader would carry them to the edge of the city, but she was quickly reminded that wolf hunting tactics were smarter than all that. Tonks had barely traveled three blocks before she found herself flaked by two astonishingly fast wolves that she only just barely managed to avoid by turning down a side street.

With no notion of which direction would lead them out the city the fastest, Tonks attempted to keep running approximately east, toward the rising moon, but the situation was quickly becoming unsustainable. She could keep the main hunt focused on herself, but the werewolves were constantly straying off path to try and surround her and it was only a matter of time before one of them became distracted by a busy street, full of people unaware of the danger. What was more, Tonks might have looked like a werewolf, but that was only skin and bones, she still had human muscles, human lungs, human heart, and she had already exhausted all of them and was running on adrenaline alone. Tonks had no idea how much longer she could outpace the werewolves. Of course, matters had not improved when Tonks had rushed onto a busy road early in the chase and been clipped by a car. If she could only use her wand she could Apparate in front of the pack and make herself a much more frustrating and uncatchable target, but she did not have a single second to spare to change back into herself. Without magic, Tonks had only her wits to use against a pack of twenty werewolves, and she was unimpressed by the odds.

Until a better option presented itself, all Tonks could do was keep the attention of the pack on herself, and so she ran on, only paces ahead and loosing ground all the time. Though werewolves repeatedly appeared unexpectedly ahead of her and she had to change course often to avoid them, she kept running east as much as possible, knowing that she would reach the city limits eventually. They passed museums and restaurants and statues and parks lit only by streetlamps, and streets upon streets of Muggles out on a fine summer night with no idea of the danger. At least they knew enough to scramble out of the way at the sight of the pack.

Tonks had long since lost track of the individual members of the pack. She knew that many of them were still following her, she could tell by the panting and howling close behind, but how many was another matter.

Worried though she was about the wolves she may have lost, Tonks could not help but take heart from the fact that her plan, whatever it was, seemed to be working. They had started in a shopping district but passed into a region filled with office buildings and then into a residential area as the pavement passed beneath her feet. Then she was running on grass and then on sand and the briny smell of the sea reached her nose. A werewolf darted in front of her and she jumped over him and carried on with only one thought in her head: there are no people in the sea. At any rate, she thought her muscles had forgotten how to do anything except run.

Tonks reached the water and jumped the first wave but the second hit her like a Bludger, knocking her off her feet and tangling her up in the surf. The next second a werewolf was on top of her, teeth bared, ready to bite.

"Lupin!" Tonks shouted with the last of the air in her lungs. It sounded like a whine. She could not have said how she knew her attacker was also her friend, but somehow she was correct. Some last remaining shred of humanity caused him to hesitate just long enough for Tonks to shove him away and find her feet.

"Lupin, help me!" Tonks howled and, amazingly, he did, he tackled the next werewolf to jump at her.

Knowing that Lupin could defend himself much better without her help at this point, Tonks took the opportunity to make her way deeper into the sea. When she had battled her way past the surf zone, she finally returned to her own appearance. Her clothes were back in the market, but this was no time for modesty. Immediately, she sent red sparks high into the air, hoping that the Order would see it and come to her aid.

Each swell of the water brought her high enough to see back to the beach. There was not enough light to count the werewolves in the surf, but she was horrified to notice the forms of several wolves still harassing the houses near the coast. Before she was even aware that she had reached a decision, Tonks pointed her wand at the wolf she could see the clearest that still remained on dry land and cast Imperius. Immediately, his mind bent to hers and the wolf began attacking its fellows and driving them toward the water. It was a good idea, perhaps one she should have used from the very beginning, but Tonks felt sick. She had just used an unforgivable curse on another human being.

When the last wolf she could find had reached the sea, Tonks released the person she had cursed and noticed something that cheered her up considerably: by the light of the moon she could barely make out several wolves at the water's edge, struggling against some unseen barrier that prevented them from returning to the city. The Order had gotten a ward up and they were outside of it, she had succeeded. Tonks was so relieved that she forgot to tread water for a moment and nearly sank beneath the surface. Only then did she realize how cold the water was, and that she was rapidly loosing feeling in her extremities. Furthermore, there could very well still be werewolves in the water looking for her. By all logic, Tonks knew she should Disapparate to safety, but there could still be people in the area, she could not leave the werewolves until the Order arrived on the scene. Apparating to shore was not an option, because Tonks was certain that she was unequal to another round of avoiding the werewolves on foot, and she could not risk Apparating into town without knowing whether or not one of the wards in the way was an anti-apparition jinx.

In the water she could hide and watch, so in the water she stayed. Besides, she was getting used to the temperature; in fact she was starting to feel quite warm…

* * *

><p>When Tonks awoke, she was in St. Mungo's, she could tell by the gently floating spheres over her head. Someone was arranging bottles of potions on her nightstand.<p>

"Hello, Healer Barlow," Tonks said, sitting up.

"Don't talk to me," Barlow muttered good naturedly. "You've caused enough work for me today. Taking a stroll on the full moon, honestly."

"I thought you said I was your favorite patient," Tonks protested.

"That's only when you don't do something foolish to get here," Barlow replied.

"I'm having trouble thinking of the last thing I did that wasn't foolish," Tonks pointed out. "I'm an Auror, it's part of the job description."

"That business about Aurors having permanent beds here is supposed to be an exaggeration," Barlow pointed out.

"Nobody tells me anything," Tonks joked.

"You weren't bitten, by the way," the Healer said.

"How about that," Tonks said, trying to sound flip buy largely failing. "Can I go then?"

"Not so fast," Barlow replied, pressing a potion into her hands. "I'm keeping you here until tomorrow night to make sure you don't have a death wish."

"You can do that?" Tonks demanded. She drank the potion and pulled a face. "That's horrible."

"Try and leave and you'll end up in the closed ward. You had severe hypothermia, muscle exhaustion, damage to your shoulder and ribs, and what on Earth did you do to your fingers and toes?"

Tonks examined her hands. "They look fine."

"They were rubbed raw when you came in," Barlow said.

"Oh," Tonks shrugged. "I got into a bit of a foot race."

"On your hands?"

"There were lots of feet." Apparently Barlow had been informed that Tonks had gotten involved with werewolves, but not that she had pretended to be one.

"If you won't tell me then at least drink your potions," Barlow sighed. "Then you can see your visitors."

"Yes, ma'am."

Very few other things could have motivated her to drink the potions so readily, but Tonks drained them all then asked for and received a glass of water for a chaser. Only then did Barlow allow Kingsley Shacklebolt and Mad-Eye Moody inside.

"That was quite a stunt," Shacklebolt said when they were alone. "What were you trying to do, take them all to Azkaban yourself?"

"I forgot Aberdeen was on the coast," Tonks admitted in a mutter.

"Don't they teach geography in Auror training anymore?" Mad-Eye demanded. "Along with what not to do when you encounter a pack of werewolves?"

"I must have missed those days," Tonks said.

"You'll be teaching them next year," Shacklebolt informed her.

"I guess I have it coming," Tonks admitted. "Was anyone bitten?"

Shacklebolt and Mad-Eye glanced at each other. "Five that we know of," Shacklebolt said at last.

"That you know of?" Tonks yelped.

"It seems one werewolf gave you the slip," Shacklebolt explained, "He did some damage, but we caught him and have him in custody. We also gathered up the wands the werewolves dropped. It would have been much worse if it weren't for you."

That was not the sort of information Tonks wanted to hear. "What about Greyback, did you get him?"

"We've been after Greyback for years," Mad-Eye said. "He knows all the tricks and must have used most of them."

"We'll figure out a way to make sure this doesn't happen again," Shacklebolt added.

"I used the Imperius curse," Tonks said quietly.

"Against a werewolf to save Muggles," Shacklebolt said. "There's no chance the Wizengamot will punish you."

"Doesn't make it right," Tonks said. She sat quietly for a moment, feeling sick. "What about Rachel?" she asked. "Did she escape?"

"I expect she's settling comfortably in Greece by now," Shacklebolt replied.

"I hear it's nice there this time of year," Tonks said, masking a bit of disappointment. She had been hoping to get the chance to talk to her old friend.

"Tonks, you don't have to do everything by yourself," Shacklebolt said suddenly. "You can ask for help."

"I do," Tonks protested.

"And then go off on your own anyway," Mad-Eye said. "You're worse than Potter."

"Oh be fair," Tonks said, "no one's worse than Harry."

"She might have a point there," Shacklebolt agreed, and they all enjoyed a bit of a laugh.

"Tonks, there's something else you need to know," Mad-Eye said after a moment. Tonks straightened up to listen. "Dumbledore's gone missing."

"What!" Tonks demanded. "Where did he go?"

"We don't know," Shacklebolt replied. "Any wizard on Earth would have a hell of a time kidnapping him, so he must have left for his own reasons, but no one seems to know where he went or when he'll be back. You were probably the last person to see him."

"I thought he was going to meet with Rachel," Tonks said.

"So did we," Shacklebolt said. "But Bill and Charlie say he never showed up. They had to question her and take her to Greece on their own."

"I've taken over as head of the Order until Dumbledore returns," Mad-Eye said.

"I'll follow you until the end, sir," Tonks replied, raising a mock salute, "just as long as you don't make Molly stop cooking for the meetings."

"Noted," Mad-Eye said.

"What are we telling the Muggles?" Tonks asked.

"Mass breakout from the zoo," Mad-Eye replied.

"So the truth, then."

"Speaking of which, Lupin's here," Shacklebolt said, then added, "not as a patient," when a look of concern crossed Tonks' face.

"I'd like to see him," Tonks replied.

"We'll tell him," Shacklebolt said and they both left.

Lupin appeared a few minutes later and hovered in the doorway looking much worse for the wear.

"Are you coming in or what?" Tonks asked him.

"Tonks…I…" he stammered without moving an inch.

In that moment, Tonks became aware of a decision that it seemed she had already made. Lupin lived in constant fear of infecting someone with lycanthropy. Tonks vowed to never, for as long as she lived, tell him how close he had come to biting her.

"Thanks for your help last night," she said instead.

"My help?" Lupin asked, surprised.

"You don't remember? Another werewolf had its eye on me, you were nearby, I asked for your help and you tackled him for me." It was close enough to the truth that Tonks did not feel guilty about the lie.

"I never should have asked you to do this. I put you in so much danger." Leave it to Lupin to focus on that part of what she had said.

"I knew what I was getting into, and I would do it again tomorrow."

"Please don't say that."

Tonks persisted. "Besides, if I hadn't been there, things might have worked out much worse for Aberdeen."

"There's some talk of awarding you the Order of Merlin."

Tonks snorted in surprise.

"No kidding? Whose idea was that?" she asked. "Well, don't worry. I'm sure I'll do something to make them reconsider before too long." But she was chuffed in spite of herself.

"Well, I should…" Lupin began, gesturing vaguely out the doorway he had still not quite left.

"Lupin, I want to say something," Tonks interrupted, and then carried on without waiting for a response. "I really enjoyed getting to work with you these past few weeks, and I think we did good together. I was also thinking that we might also be good together outside the Order, so what if…that is…"

Tonks realized she was babbling and forced herself to stop, but the nerves found a new outlet in her hands, which began twisting the hem of her bed sheet. Conservation of energy. They most certainly did not cover this in Auror training. Give her an angry pack of werewolves any day.

"Lupin, would you like to go out sometime?"

An expression Tonks had never seen before crossed Lupin's face, somehow light and heavy at the same time, but he turned away before she could study it further.

"Out as in…" Lupin asked a poster on the wall that warned against the dangers of tripping hexes.

"I dunno, eat some food, see a play, share a friendly conversation, I'm open to suggestions."

"Tonks, I'm a werewolf."

"Is that what all that was about last night? I did wonder."

"I'm thirteen years older than you."

"But that's 91 in dog years, so by comparison…Hey, are wolf years the same as dog years?"

"Tonks, this is serious. I've barely got two Galleons to rub together."

"Then I'll pay for dinner. Are you going to answer my question or keep making up excuses?"

Lupin opened his mouth and Shacklebolt burst suddenly into the room, followed closely by Mad-Eye.

"We just got word that Fudge received a ransom letter from Voldemort," Shacklebolt explained at once. "He's been given one week to surrender control of the Ministry, or else the Death Eaters are going to start attacking Muggles."

"What!" Tonks demanded, leaping out of bed. "What are we doing about this? Does anyone know where he's going to attack? Where are my clothes? Will one of you find that crazy healer and tell her that I'll prove I don't have a death wish next time I'm here?"

And without waiting for any responses, Tonks strode out of the room in her flimsy patient robes.

* * *

><p>The first, most important rule of interrogations is to never, ever, in a million years, let them see that you are scared. To do so is to give up the power and allow them room to bargain. Tonks had read this a hundred times in the Auror guidelines, she had witnessed several interrogations from an observation room, but never conducted one herself before.<p>

It was six days, fourteen hours, and twenty seven minutes since Fudge had received the ransom note. Every department in the Ministry had been working around the clock to try and stop Voldemort from executing his plan. They had investigated every back channel, turned over every stone in England, called in every marker, and the Order of the Phoenix had done still more. Tonks herself had tried twice to wheedle information out of low ranking Death Eaters, and the second time she only narrowly escaped with her skin. Even Snape was in the dark. For all their effort, they still had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow, or how to prevent it.

Tonks was terrified.

"What are they planning, Malfoy?"

"How should I know?" he replied heatedly, matching her tone.

The second rule was that suspects should not be interrogated by a person familiar to them. No way around that, really.

"Your father and Aunt are in Voldemort's inner circle, you must know something," Tonks shouted. "Think!"

She decided that her only real hope was that Draco was not a hardened criminal and would not know the tricks.

"I'm telling you, they never discussed anything around me," he maintained.

"We're not at Hogwarts, Malfoy. This isn't some prank with your cronies!"

"Nymphadora, what are you yelling about?"

"Stay out of this, Mum!" Tonks shouted, allowing no time to apologize for her tone, or even to regret it. "Unless we find a way to stop him or surrender control of the Ministry, Voldemort is going to attack Muggles."

"Sounds serious."

"This is not a joke. Is that really what you want? Voldemort in charge?"

"His goal is the only thing that matters," Malfoy said.

"If he gets his chance, Voldemort will destroy everything," Tonks replied. "How can you not see that? How can you sit there, snug and tidy on the couch, and not rage against it with everything you have?"

"You have no idea what it's like."

"We could have been friends, you and me," Tonks said. "We should have been. Voldemort and people like him destroyed that before we ever got a say. Doesn't that make you upset?"

Malfoy replied with a disinterest shrug

"Malfoy, people are going to die."

"Muggles," he scoffed.

"That doesn't make a difference!" Tonks exploded. "Large attacks take planning, strategy. It's impossible to keep them completely quiet. What do you know!"

"If you're so worried about the precious Muggles, then surrender the Ministry" Draco said evenly. "But you won't do that, will you?"

Tonks hated him, and all the worse for being right. She deeply regretted teaching him how to think and felt angry enough to make him regret it too. She felt one poorly chosen word away from physical violence. This was no longer about information.

"You still haven't figured it out, have you?" Tonks said. "Why you're here. You have no idea how badly your father messed up during that battle in the Ministry."

"That's more your fault than his," Malfoy replied.

"Found that out, did you?" Tonks said with a smirk. "Well, your despotic, sociopathic Dark Lord is not interested in fault, he wants someone to blame, someone to punish, and your father failed in his task, ruining Voldemort's carefully constructed plan."

"My father is in Azkaban," Malfoy said. "He's being punished."

"Of course," Tonks agreed. "But Voldemort is not the one punishing him. Still, the Ministry controls Azkaban, and Voldemort is far too intelligent to attack your father there. So for the moment he is safe, but you are not."

"What?"

"If you put your mind to the task, I'm sure you will conclude that you make an ideal pawn," Tonks said. "Nothing could be simpler than punishing your father through you."

Tonks watched the realization dawn in Malfoy's eye.

"So you see why your mother sent you to stay with her estranged, blood-traitor sister," Tonks concluded. "You are in more danger than you could possibly realize, and this was the final, desperate way for your mother to protect you."

"She shouldn't have bothered," Malfoy replied. "I can take care of myself."

"You wouldn't last two minutes in a duel against me," Tonks corrected, "care to wager how long it would take Voldemort to kill you?"

"Azkaban isn't the fortress it used to be."

"I'll admit that it's not."

"My father doesn't have to stay there."

"So you contend that your father could break out whenever he likes in order to protect his only son?"

"In a second."

"Then where is he?"

That shut him up.

"It's alright," Tonks said. "Maybe the buses are late."

Malfoy continued to grapple with this in silence.

"Would you like me to arrest you?"

"Nymphadora, you are being deliberately cruel and I will not tolerate it in this house," her mother shouted.

"I was finished anyway," Tonks replied. "I'm going to fight, enjoy your book."


	10. The Education of Draco Malfoy

**Chapter 10: The Education of Draco Malfoy**

Then where is he.

Draco laid fully clothed on top of the covers the guest bed amid the torn shreds of a book. He had forgotten its name.

Then where is he.

He could not remember ever feeling so angry in his life, listening to that tattoo rattle against his skull.

Then where is he.

They spun in his head, the words that took him apart.

Then where is he.

It was well past midnight, but Andromeda and Ted were still in the sitting room. Draco could hear their hushed voices, probably discussing him, planning their strategy to deny him the one thing he wanted: to leave this place. He wanted freedom, to prove he could stand on his own feet. He wanted everyone to know that he could look after himself, that there was no need for his mother to send him here.

Then where is he.

Draco suddenly became aware that he was sitting up. His mother! If Draco was in danger while hidden away at his Aunt and Uncle's house, how much danger was his mother in, still in the midst of it all? With both Draco and his father inaccessible, the Dark Lord was sure to turn his anger at her.

Then where is he.

In a flash, Draco was on his feet. In another, he was at his trunk, gathering his possessions and throwing them inside. Half way through, he realized that he needed money and had to dig to the bottom to retrieve his pouch of coins and begin again. Five minutes later he coaxed the trunk closed and dragged it out of the room.

Then where is he.

"Draco," Andromeda said, rising to her feet as he emerged. She and Ted launched into a dialog that bore the marks of long rehearsal and Draco ignored every word of it.

Then where is he.

He dragged his trunk to the front door and turned to a nearby closet. The box with his wand was there. He lifted the heavy box from its high shelf with no plan for how to break into it. He would take the whole box if he had to, but it was not locked, it had never been locked, there was no lock.

Then where is he.

Draco reached inside and retrieved his wand, then brushed past Andromeda and out the door. She and Ted were still talking when he slammed the door behind him.

Then where is he.

Draco dragged his trunk to the curb and flung out his right arm. A moment later the Knight Bus appeared. Draco stepped on board, refused the hot chocolate and the toothbrush, handed over eleven sickles, and gave the conductor an address down the street from his home.

Then where is he.

By the time the Knight Bus arrived at his destination, Draco had spent nearly half an hour with no immediate actions to take, ruminating on all the possible scenarios he might find when he arrived, and fear had crept well into his thoughts. His hands were shaking so severely that he dropped his truck twice during the walk to his house and he finally abandoned it just inside the iron gates.

Then where is he.

The front door opened at Draco's approach and for a moment he thought that Andromeda had guessed his destination and beaten him there, but then he looked again and saw that he was mistaken.

Then where is he.

"Hello, Draco," Bellatrix said. "Come inside. We've been expecting you."


	11. Speak

****Author's Note: I'd like to thank everyone for reading and reviewing so far. This is the second to last chapter of the story.

**Chapter 11: Speak**

"Healer! Please! I need a Healer here! Someone!"

It was no use; her shouts were lost among all the others, all the crying, the bending metal, the rushing water. Tonks needed to send a signal, sparks, owl, paper plane, tin cans and a string, anything, but the boy seemed to have tried to inhale the entire river. He was already a terrible shade of blue, and Tonks was afraid that if she stopped pulling the water from his lungs for even a second then he might never breathe again.

They were already too late. Too late to stop the bridge collapsing, too late to catch the cars before they fell into the water, too late to pull an unlucky boat clear before it was crushed, too late even to catch the Death Eaters responsible before they made good their escape. But this boy still had a heartbeat, and Tonks refused to be too late to remind him how to breathe. He was maybe six or seven, but it was hard to tell. He looked so young.

"Healer!" Where were they? Every second she waited here was a second she was not freeing someone from the underwater rubble.

At last, very long last, the boy coughed, spraying river water down his front, then rolled over and vomited.

"Mum?" he asked weakly when he had finished.

"I'll find her," Tonks promised before thinking through the implications. Two Muggle firemen had appeared at the top of the steep and rocky embankment, but that was no good because the boy's right leg ended at the hem of his jeans. If she could find his foot then Healers could fix it back on, he would be able to run again. Muggles could make no such promise.

As she watched the firefighters making their infuriatingly slow way down to the riverbank, Tonks considered summoning a Healer to help. She raised her wand then realized that she was thinking about this all wrong. The boy would live. That was more than could be assured for anyone worth a Healer's attention at the present moment and much more than could be said for those still trapped underwater. The firefighters had nearly reached them, so Tonks eased her hand from the boy's weak grip, stood, and stepped into the water.

"Wait, you can't go in there!" one of the firefighters shouted.

Tonks ignored him, cast a bubble head charm, and submerged herself. The bridge collapse had stirred up the silty river bottom, making it nearly impossible to see. Tonks relied on her wand, which she had charmed to point her toward anything with a heartbeat. Fortunately, any fish had been scared out of the area or it never would have worked.

Over and over Tonks encountered people she had already found and provided with a bubble head charm. They were too disoriented or tangled up to find their own way to the surface but in no immediate danger, so Tonks ignored them, except one, a middle aged man who appeared to be having a panic attack. He was trapped by his seat belt and trying to pull off the bubble head charm, so Tonks cut him free and guided him to the bank.

Tonks criss crossed her way around the wreckage, but in her urgency her sense of time did not return until she reached the opposite bank. There she realized why she had not encountered any new victims: she was looking for heartbeats.

* * *

><p>"Mad-Eye, please tell me this is the worst you've ever seen. Please say it doesn't get any worse than this."<p>

Tonks had freed those who were stuck underwater then moved on to locating the drowned and only surfaced after encountering a very surprised Muggle rescue diver. She had considered trying to find the boy she had rescued, but ultimately her courage failed. She had no idea if his mother had been saved.

Moody's dark eye radiated sympathy as he looked at her; his blue eye was occupied with something over her left shoulder. Tonks was so tired that she did not feel her usual compulsion to turn and see what else had his attention.

"Sorry, kid," Mad-Eye said at last. "Time you learned to never be surprised at what dark witches and wizards think up."

The collapse of the Brockdale Bridge was not the worst thing Mad-Eye had ever seen, nor was it the worst thing Tonks would ever see. In fact, it was not even the worst thing she would see that day, because it was only two disorienting hours later when Tonks and the other Aurors at the bridge site, robes dried but still smelling of river water, got word that giants were laying waste to a town in north Wales. That was the last moment Tonks would ever be able to remember the two events separately.

* * *

><p><em>Wasn't I just here?<em>

"Bring him down!"

Tonks did not know the name of the man who gave the order, a brute from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures who seemed at least as mean as the giants. She wished that the people from the DRCMC were not there, or at least that they were not in charge of the situation. They seemed entirely too excited about capturing and punishing the giants, and not much interested at all in protecting the imperiled Muggle population, but the jurisdiction was clear, and since the Death Eaters had run off at the first sign of Aurors, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was in charge.

Dutifully, Tonks conjured a strong rope, which bound the giant's legs. Around her, other witches and wizards did the same, ensnaring its arms and neck. A few heaves was enough to bring it down, its head crashing through the roof of a garage as it fell. Tonks cringed. Certainly that could have been avoided.

This giant was a fine example of his kind. Conservatively twenty feet tall, Tonks had seen him pound his way bare handed through five houses. She harbored a faint hope that the giants were following a leader and this might be him, but the others gave no sign that they were letting up. Tonks had heard that Hagrid recently took twelve stunning spells at once and continued fighting, and none of the spells they had used against the giants here seemed to have any effect either, but she could not help but feel a pang of sympathy as the giant was trussed up like Gulliver in Lilliput. At the beginning of the fight, Tonks had thought that Hagrid might be able to help convince the giants to stand down, now she was glad that he was somewhere else.

Tonks looked back the way the giant had come and saw an orderly row of destroyed houses eight deep. Where were their occupants? It was too much to hope that everyone had gone on holiday at once. It was dreary and rainy; many people must have been inside when this started. How many were now trapped, hurt or worse? Muggle firefighters, paramedics, and police officers were standing at the edge of the disaster area, stunned and confused, and had been for some time.

People were shouting, surrounding the next giant, preparing to pull it down, and Tonks had to help. She joined the group at the last second and grabbed hold of the rope around the giant's neck. Ten witches and wizards pulled as one and the giant fell, easier than expected, so quickly that there was barely time to get out of the way, and for the wizard in front of her, a man from the DRCMC, there was not enough time at all: he lost his footing and was trapped with his legs and hips caught under the giant's head. He howled in pain. What was worse, with its head thus padded, the giant was not knocked out or even stunned by the fall. Already it was trying to regain his feet.

Witches and wizards jumped on the giant's arms and legs, pinning it to the ground, but this only made things worse for the trapped wizard, because the only point of leverage remaining to the giant was its head. Inwardly, Tonks wished that the trapped wizard would pass out; his cries of pain were making it difficult to think of a way to rescue him. No one else seemed to notice the distressed wizard.

The others were rapidly securing the giant to the asphalt road and the trapped wizard along with it and still Tonks could think of no way of freeing the wizard without potentially releasing the giant. She was toying with the notion of performing some sort of transfiguration on the wizard when help arrived in the form of two Muggle firefighters. They managed to ignore the strangeness of the situation and efficiently placed two sacks on either side of the wizard's legs under the giant's head. The firefighters inflated the sacks, lifting the giant's head until there was enough space for Tonks to pull the wizard free. Tonks could have hugged both Muggles, but instead only thanked them, saw the wizard into the care of the Healers, and raced off to join the group at the next giant.

There were four giants left and they quickly fell into a rhythm: surround, rope, pull, trap, secure, next. Three to go. How many had they started with? The second to last put up a fight, nearly dislocating Tonks' shoulder when she tried to pull it down. Quite the opposite of washing out her robes, the rain was somehow making her smell like river water again. One left. Tonks was exhausted but pulled with everything she had, jumping up on the rope to pull with her entire body weight like she was ringing a church bell.

Then the last giant was down, tied up in ropes, given to the dubious care of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and Tonks surveyed the scene for the first time in an age. The entire place looked like a violent tornado had passed through. Why had she frozen, drawn blank after blank, when the solution to freeing the trapped wizard was so simple? The smell of river water on her hair was making her gag. With difficulty, Tonks forced those thoughts from her head and turned to the damaged houses. She lifted her wand, checked for heartbeats, and found many.

"Do you think they knew this would happen when they joined up?" Tonks said when she found herself digging through the rubble alongside Hestia Jones some time later. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had left along with the giants. A team of mediwizards and Healers from St. Mungo's were making themselves useful, but the representatives from the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee were only standing around acting bureaucratic, so it was the Aurors and a group of concerned citizens, actually the Order of the Phoenix, who were doing most of the digging.

"Who?" Jones asked.

"The giants," Tonks replied.

"Doubt it," Jones said.

"They're going to be executed."

"I wonder what Voldemort promised them."

"All the gold in Gringotts, all the magic in the world," Tonks suggested dully. "All the fire in hell."

"I'm not sure I can do this," Jones said suddenly, backing away. "I'll go help…" she trailed off, unable to name a task where she would not run such a risk of meeting a sight of gore and death.

"Sure thing," Tonks replied, letting her go without judgment, wishing she could join her. "The Muggle survivors we've already found could probably use some looking after."

"Yes, exactly," Jones said gladly and slipped away.

Tonks felt sure that she had seen every single thing there was to see that day, far too many things, only sheer will and muscle memory kept her digging on. Some members of the Order, like Hestia, were looking to her for guidance on how to act. She had to press on, resist the urge to run, try not to think of everything she had seen that day. She could have sorely used a hug, reassurance that something solid was left in a world where buildings could crumble so easily.

And what had they accomplished that day. No Death Eaters were caught, no victories were gained. Voldemort had proven that he was willing to make good on his threats and played the rest of them for fools.

"Hey down there!" Tonks exclaimed with relief when she shifted aside a final cross beam and found four terrified and dirty faces staring up at her. Tears slipped down her nose and on to them. "Don't worry, we'll have you out of there in no time!"

* * *

><p>Tonks barely slept that night. Every time she closed her eyes she found herself underwater or back fighting against giants, or some combination of the two. The one time she actually fell asleep she had a dream that had not haunted her since her Auror exams, the one where she got to a test only to realize that she did not know any spells at all. No need to consult the <em>Dream Chronicle<em> to find out what was on her mind. After that she spent the night at her table, watching her Auror communication stone in the flickering light, listening to the pipes rattle in the old building, a forgotten cup of tea near at hand. Every second she was sure that she would be summoned to another attack.

By two in the morning, Tonks was so tense that she turned on her wizarding wireless just for the sound of another human voice. Every single channel was discussing the two attacks; there was not a song to be found, not even a Quidditch score to lighten the mood. She switched it off quickly at returned to waiting.

With no immediate threat, when her thoughts managed to slip back before the attacks, they persisted in returning again and again to her conversation with Lupin in St. Mungo's, and the look on his face when she suggested that they spend time together outside the Order. She had finally settled on the meaning of his expression, it was a look of defeat.

For something to do, Tonks inspected her reflection in her bathroom mirror and wondered if she was vain. Her hair was a dull, ashy brown, exactly between her mother's dark brown and her father's dirty blonde, its natural color, unseen in years. Try as she might, she could not turn it back to pink, or purple, or any other color. It was as though she had forgotten how to use her metamorphmagus skills, but that was a fundamental part of her, not something she could simply forget or lose. Maybe she was just too tired so summon the requisite concentration.

Finally, the sun rose and she went to work.

From the look of the rest of the Aurors, most of them had passed the night in rather the same way as Tonks and they spent the day pitting their determination to be alert and prepared for the next attack against their fatigue in a fight they could only lose. Tonks barely reacted when the orders came down that she was to begin patrolling Hogsmeade, though she did manage a response when she learned that Dawlish had been given the same assignment.

That night Tonks had the watch of Privet Drive. Her nervous energy was finally wearing out, but all was quiet. She wondered how much Harry knew about the Muggle attacks. Certainly he must have heard about them. By the early hours of the morning, knowing that Harry was relying on her was the only thing keeping her alert.

On the second day, Tonks heard third hand that Fudge had stepped down as Minister of Magic and been replaced by Rufus Scrimgeour. She did not believe it until she left the office late that night and saw the mass of reporters and politicians in the entrance hall.

On the third day, Dumbledore returned as suddenly and quietly as he had disappeared and the world returned to normal.

* * *

><p>Tonks wished that she had chosen a seat a little further forward for this meeting of the Order of the Phoenix because Hagrid took the two seats next to her and said, "I don' blame yeh, o' course."<p>

Rumors had made it as far as the Auror office that Hagrid had gone to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to petition on the captured giants' behalf. Now he cut a defeated figure as ever she had seen, which was evidence enough of the outcome of his efforts.

"I'm sorry, Hagrid," Tonks began, taking his big hand in both of hers, and then was saved by Dumbledore, who stepped to the front of the room to begin the meeting.

"If it's not to bold to say so, I suppose all of you are curious where I've been these past several days. I hope none of you take it as a comment on your honor or integrity when I say that I would prefer not to share this information until the proper time. Let me assure you, though, that it was all to aid our efforts to defeat Voldemort. Now then-"

"But what happened to your hand, Albus!" Professor McGonagall burst out.

Tonks craned forward and caught a glimpse of a blackened claw where Dumbledore's right hand had been before he shook his sleeve over it.

"It is a matter of no importance," Dumbledore said, then moved on to other topics: current Death Eater activity, preparations for the coming year at Hogwarts, the defenses being added to certain residences frequented by Order members, and the recent Muggle attacks, but when he tried to move on from that, Tonks found that she had something to say.

"Professor, if I might interject…"

"Certainly," Dumbledore replied.

Tonks stood, feeling a bit surprised at herself. She had never interrupted an Order meeting before, unless she counted the time she was attacked by Dementors at Privet Drive.

"I'm concerned about why the Muggle attacks stopped. Voldemort said he would attack Muggles unless we surrendered the Ministry. But we haven't given up control of the Ministry, so why did Voldemort stop? He's proven he can take us by surprise, so if he wants the Ministry then why isn't he still trying to get it?"

"Maybe we've got him running scared, ever think of that?"

"You wouldn't say that if you were there, Dung," Tonks replied. "He pulled one over on us, twice, then he stopped. It doesn't make sense."

"I suppose you have a hypothesis," Dumbledore invited.

"Just a thought, really," Tonks admitted. "We didn't give the Ministry over to Voldemort, but Fudge is no longer Minister. Could that be what be what Voldemort wanted?"

"Are you saying Scrimgeour could be working for Voldemort?" someone asked with a panicked edge in her voice.

"I very much doubt it," Shacklebolt replied, standing up. "I've known the man for years. But I don't think we can discount the possibility that someone else close to him could be under the Imperius curse."

At the front of the assembly, Dedalus Diggle got to his feet.

"Why are we discussing a crisis which has already passed when there are rumors that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has resumed using Inferi?

Apparently, Diggle was the only person in the room to have heard those rumors, because this caused a bit of an uproar.

"I speak out of concern for the respect of the recently dead," he continued.

"How do you know these rumors are true?" someone asked.

Tonks sighed, knowing her moment was lost. "The incantation is Incendio, Diggle, give it a try," she muttered, resuming her seat.

"I heard it directly from one of the Obliviators sent to Ashwick after a group of Inferi were spotted there," Diggle said.

"Wait, where?" Tonks demanded, on her feet again. Her parents had not mentioned any Inferi activity, but Ashwick was a small city, certainly, and not many magical folk lived there.

"Thank you for bringing these matters to our attention, Nymphadora and Dedalus," Dumbledore said, bringing to meeting back to order.

Shaken, Tonks took her seat and listened as the meeting continued. There was one more matter she wanted to take care of, and she had already put it off for far too long, but when the meeting adjourned and she tried to catch Lupin's eye she saw that he was already making a run for the door. Tonks sighed, she had hoped that she might be able to sample some of Mrs. Weasley's cooking this time, but instead of following everyone into the kitchen, she followed Lupin.

By the time Tonks got outside, there was no sign of Lupin, so she Disapparated and found a light on in his ramshackle house, her second guess after the Hog's Head. Her stomach was twisted in knots. Somehow she suspected that this condition was not related to all the Apparating. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she strode to the door. Lupin answered on the third knock.

"Tonks," he said, sounding startled. He hesitated a moment in the doorway then joined her outside.

"Wotcher," she replied. "You left pretty quickly."

"Sorry, am I needed for something?" Lupin asked, drawing his wand to Disapparate.

"No, no," Tonks said quickly. "I've just… been wanting to talk to you."

"What about?" Lupin crossed his arms, looking wary.

"I'd like to finish the conversation we started in St. Mungo's, about dinner."

"I thought we did finish that conversation," Lupin said.

"No, we were interrupted," Tonks countered. "As I recall, you were arguing against, and I was systematically dismantling all your points. Would you like to resume there?"

"Tonks, we've been working together a lot recently…"

"No," Tonks interrupted. "Do not try to write this off as some fluke of proximity."

"Regardless, this isn't a good idea," Lupin replied.

"Merlin, I'm not asking you to marry me, just join me for dinner."

"I can't!"

"Why? Because you're a werewolf?"

"Exactly."

"And how long ago did you decide that was relevant?"

"It's relevant, I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"How many times do I have to tell you that I don't care? Are you really going to let a madman who bit you almost thirty years ago decide whether or not you get to be happy?"

"I'll hurt you."

"You couldn't. You sound like you think you're doing me a favor. I promise, you're not."

The pair stared at each other for a moment.

"Just answer this," Tonks said at last. "Are you saying no because you're a werewolf, or because you see no potential for anything between us?"

Despite the darkness of Lupin's doorstep, Tonks saw his answer in his eyes, but Lupin did not speak. The silence stretched thin, then broke.

"I withdraw the invitation," Tonks said and turned to Disapparate.

Before long, the anger evaporated leaving only the pain.

* * *

><p>The next evening, Tonks Apparated to the specified point in the backyard of the Burrow, stepped through the garden, careful not to uproot any turnips, and knocked on the back door. Molly answered.<p>

"Everything's fine," Tonks said in response to Molly's startled look. What had they come to when the typical response to an unexpected visit is not "Nice to see you," but "What's happened?"

"I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes," Tonks continued.

"Of course, dear," Molly said, inviting her inside.

Tonks stepped into the kitchen and found Ron, Hermione, and Ginny in the adjoining living room. Ron and Hermione were frozen on opposite side of a chess board and Crookshanks was rubbing his head against Ginny's outstretched hand in an attempt to get her to resume scratching him. Ron recovered first.

"Hey Tonks," he said. "Any idea when Harry will be able to come over?"

"Honestly, Ron!" Hermione hissed.

"Give her some space you insensitive prat," Ginny echoed, much more to the point.

"Shouldn't be long now," Tonks managed in response to Ron's question, hoping this was not a lie. She must have looked even worse than she thought.

She tried to express her gratitude by flashing a pig's snout to Hermione and Ginny as they cleared out, but did not manage it. Her metamorphmagus abilities had been malfunctioning for days. Any other time that would have been first on her list of concerns, but now it was not even in the top five.

"What's on your mind?" Molly asked, placing two cups of tea on the table and sitting down behind one of them. Tonks took the seat opposite.

"I went to talk with Lupin yesterday," Tonks began, she did not need to tell Molly what the topic of discussion had been. "It didn't go well."

Molly took a sip of tea, waiting for her to continue, and Tonks felt an immediate wave of gratitude along with a slight pang of jealousy for Ginny. Her own mother would have already been overflowing with advice by this point.

"I really think we could be great together, him and I, and I'm pretty sure he thinks so too, but he won't even try."

Again, Molly waited, but Tonks had run out of words.

"I take it you intend to change his mind," she said after a moment.

"Is that stupid?" Tonks asked.

"Not at all," Molly replied. "But…are you certain you're not doing more harm than good."

"I'm not there yet."

"Then go get him."

And so she did, and every time she saw him it was a breath of fresh air and a punch in the gut. She wore her new Patronus like a badge of honor and hoped he would see it often, she tried to forget all about him and did not succeed, and after bad fights, long nights, a string of terrible hair days, and many, many cups of tea, she was right.


	12. Ob La Di

Author's Note: This is it, the last chapter. I hope you've enjoyed reading this, I certainly had a lot of fun writing it. Anyway, thanks for sticking it out until the end, and a special thanks to Cat, Miss R.E. Mulvey, J-star Black, muggle, Vera Rozalsky, Mint Berry Crunchita, chelseyb1010, vincent1875, ElizabethI, and Xterker23 for the reviews.

**Chapter 12: Ob-La-Di**

Four years after he left, Draco Malfoy walked up the front steps of his Aunt's house a humbled man. He had taken the long way through town, but though he had spotted a few dogs that might have been Toby, there was no sign of Mallory.

Andromeda opened the door when he knocked.

"Draco, what a surprise."

She looked older than he had expected: more lines on her face, more grey in her hair.

"Hello, Aunt Andromeda. May I come in?"

She led the way into the sitting room, then ducked into the kitchen to fetch drinks, declining Draco's offer to assist. This left him a few moments to inspect the room. The furniture was unchanged except for the addition of a brightly colored box in the corner. A few more pictures had been added to the collection above the fireplace, but Andromeda returned before Draco could inspect them more closely.

Draco took a seat on the sofa, but on the opposite side from where he had spent the majority of that summer. Ted's armchair still occupied the place of honor closest to the wizarding wireless, but Andromeda brought a chair from the dining room and sat there instead.

So much of Ted lingered here that Draco would not have been surprised if his Uncle emerged from the study, took a seat in his chair, and turned the wireless to the day's Quidditch match, but the snatchers had gotten to him instead. Draco had been at Hogwarts when Ted was captured, he had learned of his Uncle's death in a gloating letter from Bellatrix. He could not say what he might have done had he been there, it was one of many things that kept him awake at night.

"It's lovely to see you, Draco," Andromeda began when Draco did not. "What brings you by today?"

For all his brazen words, Draco knew that he was not a brave man; it took a rare situation to drive him to bold action. In this case it also took Astoria Greengrass, who made him want to set right the wrongs of his past.

"I wanted to thank you for taking me in," Draco said, "and apologize for leaving like I did."

"Don't mention it."

"I also wanted to extend my condolences for Uncle Ted and Nymphadora."

"Thank you," Andromeda whispered, and for a moment Draco wondered if he had erred in bringing up his Uncle and cousin, but when she continued her voice was strong. "They died for what they believed in, that means something, at least."

Draco nodded, silent, wondering what it was like to possess that sort of fortitude.

"It's Uncle Ted now, is it?" Andromeda asked, not unkindly. "Last time you were here you seemed to do everything in your power to deny that relationship."

"I was a fool," Draco replied bluntly. That had been proved to him enough times, though the admission still stung. "Uncle Ted was a good man. I was told some things I shouldn't have believed." He hesitated. "You don't want to hear my excuses."

"No," Andromeda agreed, taking a drink from her glass. Draco did the same.

They lingered in silence a moment and Draco wondered if he would do better to just leave.

"You were sixteen," Andromeda said at last. "Everyone does stupid things when they're sixteen. You should hear what Nymphadora put us through…"

"I'd like to," Draco said genuinely. Another thing the years had provided him was a deep regret that he had not gotten to know his fiery, intelligent cousin while he had the chance.

Andromeda looked to the ceiling and a smile touched her lips, but then the light of fond memory left her eyes and she said, "Perhaps some other time."

"Alright," Draco said. "How's your garden?" It was an attempt to change the subject, and he did not want to think about his Aunt sitting around, alone, in this old, empty house all day.

"It's still there," Andromeda replied. "Not as big as it used to be, though, there just aren't enough hours in the day."

"What have you been doing instead?"

But Draco already had his answer. A young boy with bright green hair had just appeared from the direction of the bedrooms, sucking on the fingers of one hand and rubbing sleep from his eyes with the other. He crossed the room and climbed into Andromeda's lap.

"Nana, who dat?"

"Teddy, this is your mother's cousin," Andromeda replied. "Er, uncle?" she said, asking Draco for permission to bestow the title on him. He could only nod dumbly. "This is your Uncle Draco."

"He's Nymphadora's?" Draco asked, his brain struggling to work its way out of shock. "Hers and Lupin's?"

"You didn't know?" Andromeda inferred.

"No," Draco replied. He had never contemplated being someone's uncle before, but found that he rather liked the idea.

Growing bolder, Teddy slipped down from his Grandmother's lap and walked up to Draco's knee.

"Nice to meet you, Teddy," Draco said.

In response, Teddy's hair changed from bright green to pale blonde.

"Neat trick," Draco said, lifting Teddy up onto the sofa beside him, but he only remained there for a minute before clambering back down and making for the box of toys in the corner.

"How is he?" Draco asked. "I mean, with both his parents…"

"He doesn't really understand yet," Andromeda replied, "but we're all here for him. Remus named Harry his Godfather, and he knows a few things about being an orphan. He'll be there to help Teddy through."

"That's good," Draco said, nodding slowly, knowing that he and Harry would never truly see eye to eye. "Well, if you need a babysitter."

"I may at that," Andromeda replied gratefully. "In the meantime, would you like to stay for dinner?"

"I would, thanks," Draco agreed readily. "I've missed your cooking." But then he said something else, something that he had not realized he wanted to ask. As soon as he said it, though, he knew it was the reason he came back.

"Aunt Andromeda, why didn't you tell me?"


End file.
